Early evening today I was caught in a rainstorm. As I walked I passed people on every block, mostly without umbrellas, either going to or coming from the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Suddenly I noticed a very different feeling about the rain and the people. No one was minding that they were getting soaked. No one was rushing to find shelter, or hurrying to their next location. All were walking as though the sun was brightly shining and cars were not splashing when passing. I liked the feeling. Walking in the rain and getting soaked never happened in quite that way for me before. Stuart Wilde once wrote, “If it’s raining, do rain.” Once you’re in that mindset; it’s easy. When I entered the building where I live, someone was leaving. She looked at my shoes and soaked pants stuck to my legs decorated by the wind with leaves and tiny white petals, and she turned around and headed for the elevator. I guess she didn’t want to do rain.
The worst storm I was ever in was in Panama, in the mountains of beautiful Boquete. Rainstorms there rarely announce themselves: one minute you’re basking in the sun; the next minute you’re drenched through and through. No matter, the sun is suddenly shining, and soon everything is dry. That one worst rainstorm with thunder deep in the mountains left me gasping, the road quickly flooded, and buckets of water poured down unrelentingly. It seemed almost like a joke to have been caught in such a downpour.
Then again, I was walking to a Bed & Breakfast place in Ireland when I was almost blown away into Galway Bay. It was the loneliest rainstorm I’d ever encountered. Ever so quickly darkness was everywhere, the Bay became rough, the rains descended unmercifully, and the winds came. No one was around, and there was nothing to hang onto.
These rainstorms taught me to laugh because sometimes you can be in the most ridiculous situations, and there’s nothing to do but laugh.