Rain can’t spoil a vacation but it can certainly cause one to have to adjust. Chautauqua is a walking place where you walk from one event to another, and several of the best programs are held outdoors, but thunderclouds force me to adjust.
Life is much the same where we think our day, week, and years are carefully planned when a sudden cloudburst of illness, job change, and even the ultimate game changer, the prospect of death causes the best laid plans to go awry.
It’s how we adjust to the storms that tells us much for ourselves. One can adjust like I did yesterday by taking a nap, or in real life terms using the rain for making excuses to not participate. One can keep plugging along using temporary measures such as rain coats and umbrellas pretending that the rain doesn’t exist and making no adjustments. Then there are those who welcome the rain because there’s nothing they can do about it and use the opportunity to make new discoveries such as learning about bats and amusement parks.
There are not any wrong responses to the rain. Sometimes a nap is exactly what is needed such as yesterday for me, but most times a better response is to use even the worst rainstorms as opportunities. A serious illness can bring a family together, a financial crisis may teach us that the material is not as important as we once thought, or an act of violence may bring out a quality of forgiveness we never believed could exist.
Maybe the lyrics of the children’s song should change from “rain, rain, co away” to “rain, rain, come what may?”
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