I’ve always loved the rain. I love the sound of it, the smell, the sight, and the sensation of cold droplets stinging my skin. There’s always just been something special about the sound of pounding rain on a roof, watching raindrops trace paths down a windowpane, or stepping shoeless into a fresh freezing puddle. Rain is cleansing, and always seems to bring me up when I’m feeling down.
Yesterday we had a day long rain. It drizzled all day, misty and cloudy. Whenever I stepped outside, cold wet air surrounded me, and I’d come back inside with damp hair and cold fingers. It was pretty overcast, the kind of dreary day that one might associate with negative feelings. However, the weather only seemed to improve my mood.
As the day went on, I found myself feeling better and better. I had more energy, and I didn’t feel so stressed. In my classrooms, I listened for the rain, or looked out the window at the drops falling from the sky. When I went outside, I walked slowly across the parking lot in order to enjoy the cool crisp weather. The very air outside smelled cleaner, felt cleaner. It seemed to clear my head in a way that it hadn’t been in a while.
Rain has always served that kind of a purpose for me. I’ve often thought about how nice it would be to move somewhere like Washington (the state), where it rains almost constantly. Here, it doesn’t rain all that much. At least, as not as much as I’d like it to. If I had my way, it would rain every day. But, if it did, would it still hold the special qualities that it does for me?
In one of my favorite books, “The Fault In Our Stars”, one of the characters says, “Without pain, how could we know joy?”. I’ve thought about this quote a lot since reading it. Would we still know what joy and happiness are if there were no such things as pain and sadness? I’d like to believe that there would be. Theoretically, someone could live their whole life having nothing go wrong and know what happiness is. If they got everything they wanted, never went without something they desired, I have a hard time believing that because they never experienced sadness they wouldn’t be able to be happy about their good fortune.
Maybe pain and sadness enhances our appreciation of the good things. If we were never sad, we would be happy, but we might not appreciate how good our life truly is, because we’ve never felt things like sadness. We wouldn’t be able to fully understand how lucky we are to be happy because we’ve never felt anything other than it.
If it rained all the time, maybe all of the things that I love about rain would be taken for granted. The smell, the sound, the sight. The sensation of rain on your skin. Downpours don’t come around often, but that’s part of what makes them so special. They’re rare, and because of this rarity, when they do come around we pay attention. We appreciate them for everything they are because we don’t have easy constant access to them. Rain might not be a constant occurrence, but it is much appreciated when it does come around. See you next week!
“Reprinted from Hagel Publications, Inc. dba as Courier Newspapers”