Weather with you

 This song from Crowded House released in 1992 has been on repeat for the last few days on my Spotify pensive playlist along with another song “Can’t let Go” by Robert Plant. Will write about my pensive play list sometime in the future. “Weather with you” is a philosophically rich song. The key idea behind the song is captured in the chorus. The idea being that we always take our own weather with us; we are always responsible for creating the environment around us; it’s energy, it’s emotional content, it’s impact. 

The stoics understood this concept extremely well and there are several places in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations where he uses Weather to metaphorically provide an idea about embracing and loving what comes to pass, for better or for worse, and not let our internal contentment be guided by external factors. He also mentions elsewhere that we have the ability to control and regulate our inner mental and emotional states. A similar idea is explained by another stoic philosopher Seneca in a collection called “Letters from a Stoic”. Seneca uses the idea of climate and uses it to describe emotional baggage that we carry. Essentially for a change to take place we need to change the emotional bag within; true change cannot be influenced from without. 

So I guess the song has been on repeat to remind me to be on the lookout for things that are and can cause emotional and mental turmoil; to aim to live live in harmony with the cosmos and to remind myself to control my mind, my emotions, reactions and to aim to reduce my general chaos. It’s essentially a reminder that the weather is in me. 

C