A Moment to Cherish

Somebody once said that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
As I was driving to work today, I experienced one such moment. A moment of simple, yet breathtaking beauty that made me just glad to be alive.
I was in my car, making my way along the inner roads of Bangsar to the NST office. It was simply pouring down and visibility was simply terrible.
And then, as I rumbled up a little hillock, the rains began to abate and the skies started to clear. What happened next was surreal, beautiful and strangely hypnotic, all at once. The skies around me were all still a dull grey, but up ahead the evening sun was poking out through the angry clouds.
Shafts of radiant light began pouring out, each one clearly defined and illuminating the city below it an a soft, heavenly glow.
All around me, drops of rain were still pattering down. But, what was just moments ago furious drops of stinging water had wound down to steady drizzle. Water splashed off my windscreen, every drop splattering into smaller and smaller droplets.
It throbbed on my roof, a calming, hypnotic drumbeat, the rhythm much like that of a heart. All around me, the world seemed clean and fresh and magical. The rainwater seemed to have had an almost divine cleansing effect on creation.
The world too seemed to be in a slumber, the roads mostly empty, what cars there were crawling by at half pace and hardly a person to be seen anywhere.
It was in a word, beautiful. And coming as it did on the back of a pretty lousy week, where the ugliness of humanity once more made itself painfully apparent, it was a welcome and appreciated reminder that things are more than just about humans and human relationships.
Sometimes, man can be an isle. Sometimes, it is better to seek solace in the inanimate, or in nature, than it is in your fellow man.
Sometimes, it is better to be alone and cherish the solitude.