I was struck this morning by the satellite image of the three storms brewing in the Atlantic Ocean. The National Hurricane Center is predicting an above-average likelihood for storms to hit the east coast this year, making the stretch between North Carolina and Massachusetts as likely to get hit as Florida or the other Gulf Coast states.

Seeing this image reminded me immediately of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. It doesn’t take a trained eye to see the similarities.

Some things are timeless, aren’t they? Take away the cell phones and iPads and Facebook and Skype, and you are left with a certain kindred spirit shared with Nature. It’s in us, all the time, waiting to be tapped, accessed, embraced.

Now, I’m fairly sure that Vincent didn’t have some kind of psychical experience with the Hurricane Center, tapping into some yet-to-fly satellites capturing the swirling beauty of the giants in our oceans. No. He probably wasn’t event thinking about hurricanes at all.

But the patterns are apparent in all of nature — the whirls and swirls of the winds, the rains, the energy and spirit running like a meandering current around rocks and banks and all things between.

It’s a universal image, when we stop long enough to see it. Maybe even feel it, too.

School starts up for me on Monday. I resume teaching English 12 Honors after a five-year hiatus, and at times I have let the needs overwhelm me. It is at these times that I feel like it’s me against some other force — time, perhaps. Maybe that won’t-go-away pressure to be perfect all the time.

What will they think if they walk into my room and things don’t look polished and positively sterile?

They’ll probably think that things are as they have always been, for sure.

That’s why I am grateful that I am keeping at least a small channel open in my mind to see the beauty in things like a weather map so that it may serve as a reminder to me, in some way, that I can’t fight or resist; I can only recognize the natural patterns surrounding me, then make a decision about whether to Flow or Go.

That’s all any of us can do. Everything else breeds resistance and resentment, and none of us has the time to waste on such nonsense.

Stop, feel the whirls and swirls around you, and act: Flow or Go?

Suddenly, your life will never be the same. . . .