My rainy reflection

What may be bad for us, might be a blessing for others.

After a long night sleep I opened my eyes. As I heard the noise of the rain, I looked outside my window and I stared at the raindrops falling down. I started getting ready to work as I saw the gloomy scenario in front of me, and I thought about the destruction this beautiful phenomenon brings to many people.

In that moment I noticed that was going to be a very reflexive day for me; that’s the effect the rain has in me.

Rain = Destruction?

For the people who don’t have a home rainy days are hard because they don’t have a place to protect themselves and their families from the cold breezy weather. The people who are fortunate enough to have a home and a car to drive themselves normally complain about the traffic jams, the puddles, or about littering their house floors with mud. The people who have to walk miles and miles to get to work feel frustrated, getting wet trying to find an Uber, taxi or bus to get closer, while they notice that, due to the bad weather, all the drivers are full and the fees are higher.

Those are situations I see every day in the city I live in, and some of them are struggles I actually have experienced. I thought about all the possibilities to arrive to work on time and left the house.

Rain = Thrive?

About 20 minutes passed and as I was crying looking at my phone screen for a while, waiting for an uber to accept my ride (2 drivers had cancelled on me by this moment) I started thinking about the families that depend on agriculture. The last few weeks had been very hot and dry, so it may have been hard for them to take care of their plants and their lands. In that same moment I was crying, the plants and those families were thankful for the rain.

Rain is uncontrollable, what you can control is what you do out of it

And then it hit me. I thought to myself: “When did I start looking at the rain as something negative?”. When I was little I would get excited by the rain, I would go to jump in the puddles, I would get excited by feeling the cool raindrops falling down my face. In those moments, in my childhood, I would be very happy, just experiencing, appreciating, and loving the small details of life. I started my day very frustrated by the rain, because I didn’t want to get wet while trying to find an uber to drive me to work. And I thought: “Why can’t I just enjoy this moment?”. So I stood there, for a minute, only feeling the raindrops falling over me. And that’s the moment I knew how much I was missing the contact with the world around me. That I’ve been so focused on myself, without looking around. I hadn’t been open to just feel and enjoy the small treasures in life.

I started to relax and just accepting that what was happening was what had to be. I even started to feel better, and as the rain started to calm down, I finally found an uber that could take me to work! I would be late anyways, so I just accepted it and let it go. To my surprise, when I arrived, most of my coworkers weren’t there due to traffic jams and accidents. In the end I noticed that, if I had been stressing out over the fact that I would be late to work I would have lost the opportunity to enjoy a few minutes dancing in the rain.

In times of trouble, the only thing you can control is how much you let it affect you

About 20 minutes later, most of my coworkers arrived and everyone looked like a mess. They were all dirty and wet, but mostly, they seemed upset. While I was calmly working on my computer I thought “I think we all need to chill and just start enjoying what life brings to us”.

When we grow up, we tend to lose the sense of wonder we had as kids, and thinking about it, it’s one of the best qualities a person can have. Being curious, joyful and in contact with the world around you. One of the most important lessons of mindfulness is to focus on what is actually happening, and living every minute as if it was the last one. Because you don’t know if you have the future guaranteed.  

Rain = opportunity?

Experiences like the rain can be bad for many people. But there are opportunities to do something good out of it, too. I was so glad to see people in my hometown publishing they had rooms and beds available in their houses for the people that had to be evacuated from their homes by the floods, and for the people who don’t have a home.

Behind the destruction and suffering, there’s an opportunity to do something good, and make a positive impact in someone else’s life.

Even the smallest of things create a big impact.

“What may be bad, could be a blessing for others; and from every bad experience, there’s a good action you can do”.