In the Fog

Fog enveloped us as we emerged from the house this morning for our walk.

Fog isn’t very common here in Northern Illinois, and when it is present, it isn’t usually very thick or long-lasting. For me, it’s a pleasant diversion from the other, more severe, winter weather that we experience.

I grew up in Northern California, where fog is so legendary that it merits at least two Wikipedia pages, “San Francisco fog”, and “Tule fog”.

My childhood summers in the San Francisco Bay Area were filled with fog. It rolled in during the late afternoon and stayed with us all night, until the morning sun burned it off.

My great aunt lived in the central valley of California, where there was a dreaded fog called tule fog. This thick and dense fog was so extreme that it was known to cause multi-car accidents of over one hundred cars. We used to say that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face in tule fog, and that wasn’t far from the truth.

Fog makes it hard to see, for any distance. It is difficult to know where you are, or where you are going, when you are in fog.

This morning, as I walked through the fog, I thought about the times in my life when I have felt like I was in a fog about where I was, or where I was going in my life.

This has happened a lot since I have had my own business. Both inner and outer factors are frequently shifting, and these affect the growth, vitality and direction of the business. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a fog about where I am and where I’m going with my business.

During these times in my life, I have typically expended a lot of time and energy trying to find my way out of the fog that I was feeling, or trying to see clearly in the fog. In California, fog was so common that we all had strategies that we used to find our way around and through it.

One day, recently, as I was struggling to find my way through the fog that I was feeling about my life, a question suddenly occurred to me: What if, instead of trying to find my way through the fog, I just waited until the fog lifted?

When I was growing up, if the fog was really bad, we just didn’t go anywhere until it lifted. It was too risky to venture out in it. If things needed doing, they just got to wait until the fog lifted, unless it was an emergency.

So, I have recently stopped trying to find my way when I feel like I am in a fog, trusting that the fog will lift in its own time, and I will then move forward with clarity and ease. Of course, this is going against the grain of everything that our culture teaches us about pushing through, at all costs, to get to the other side.

I don’t know how this will work, but I do feel like this is what the fog came to teach me today.

How do you “be”, when you are in the “fog times” of your life?