There is a line in a book that I come back to every few weeks, and have done so ever since I came across it a few years ago. Given the recent change in weather, with all the precipitation we’ve had this week, I’ve found myself thinking about it again, and it reminds me of one fine (but very wet) day last month.
It was a Saturday in December, in the thick of the festive season. My wife and I made plans to go out to dinner, reservations and all. I’d booked the restaurant earlier that week, in the hope (or rather misguided optimism) that the weekend will bring clear, dry weather for our night out. Fast forward to Saturday, and after a foggy but dry morning, it started to drizzle in the early afternoon, but it didn’t stop there. The typical British trickle we call rain took on new life and turned into torrential downpours. By the time we were meant to leave for dinner, it was properly coming down. We stood staring out the window for a moment, looking at the grim outsides, both thinking the same thought, wondering whether it might be best to cancel or reschedule, before dismissing the thought and bracing ourselves for the elements, because when faced with the choice between subjecting oneself to gusty winds and heavy rain, and calling a dining establishment to back out of dinner reservations, one opts for the former. It’s simply the British way, and it’s not even really a choice.
So out we went. The restaurant was close enough for us to make it there in one piece, but not so close that we didn’t get soaked through our coats and trousers. After the first few minutes it took us to acclimatise to the indoor warmth and get as dry as possible, we settled in for a nice evening with tasty food and drinks. As we spooned the last bits of our dessert sundaes, it dawned on me that we had to do it all over again – the walk, that is – this time in the opposite direction. We had to brave the elements once more, except, by the time we stood by the door, ready to leave, the elements had taken on new life. The gusts and the rain were more intense, so much so that it put the earlier downpour to shame. We had little choice but to put up the hoods of our jackets and get on with it.
Now, what I haven’t said up to this point, is that we had an umbrella with us, but it was of no use. I tried to put it up on our way out to the restaurant, but if you’ve ever found yourself out in horizontal rain on a windy day, then you know how useless umbrellas are. At best, the umbrella might shield you from some of the top-down rain, but the sideways rain will pelt you all over. At worst, the wind will blow it inside-out, dislodging the spokes or mangling the ribs, so that you’ll no longer have a functional umbrella.
That’s what we noticed as we walked away from the restaurant. There were casualties in the form of broken, disfigured, abandoned umbrellas on the side of the road. As we walked, we spotted more of those umbrellas, in all forms and sizes – big and small, patterned and plain, ribbed and collapsible – all decommissioned. Halfway through the walk home, we decided to start counting how many umbrellas were on the roadside. We wondered if the tally would get to 15 – it seemed like a reasonable number given that we were now about 10 minutes away from home. And so we walked in the rain, and counted broken umbrellas, and walked in the rain some more, and counted some more. My wife scanned one side of the road and I scanned the other. Each time we spotted a fallen soldier, we increased our joint tally with the excitement of a toddler counting horses in the countryside. It was like playing I Spy on a scenic road trip, but on foot, in stormy weather, with only one object of interest.
The 15th umbrella was at the entrance to the car park just outside our building. You can imagine how we felt, it was like clinching the final level of a video game with 2 seconds left on the clock. Think high-fives and fistbumps and air punches, or maybe I imagined all these in my battered, weather-worn, euphoric state. You might ask, were we celebrating because we hit our target of finding 15 broken umbrellas, or were we celebrating because we were finally home and glad to be out of the storm? The answer is simply, yes. It was nice to be home, but it was also nice for us to score this little, deceptively insignificant win in the ridiculous game we made up on the spot. And that’s exactly what it was to us, a game. What I didn’t realise in the moment, is that this silly little game of spotting as many broken umbrellas as possible made the otherwise challenging experience of walking through a storm much more pleasurable. This brings me to the line in the book I referred to earlier. The book is The Comfort Book, the author is Matt Haig, and the line is:
“It is easier to learn to be soaked and happy than to learn how to stop the rain.” – Matt Haig
I find this line so elegant and beautiful in its simplicity and profundity. It speaks to a certain truth in how we have an innate desire to control whatever situation we find ourselves in, but the flip side of this desire for control is the illusion that the situation is ours to control. How often do we try to wish the rain away so we can get on with our day? How often do we shake our fists at the skies and curse the clouds for releasing the water that all life depends on? How often do we seek to exert ourselves in trying to change the outcome of an event we have no control over? How often do we even fail to realise that we have no control to begin with?
When I think back to that stormy night in December, I realise that I can speak to the events of the day with some fondness not because the rain subsided and the wind abated – if anything, the rain and wind got worse as the night progressed – but rather because our framing of the situation changed. At some point on the walk, we realised that we had no control over the weather, we were going to get battered and soaked, but in playing the “spot the umbrella” game, we’d turned the battering into a worthwhile activity. In other words, we were still soaked, that wasn’t up to us and that wasn’t going to change, but we were also happy, and that was entirely our making.
Life throws all sorts of things at us. Sometimes it’s just a little rain, no more than a trickle or drizzle. Sometimes it’s more severe, like a storm that threatens to sweep us off our feet. Sometimes our trusty old umbrella might shield us from the elements, sometimes the umbrella might end up on the roadside and we’d find ourselves soaked from head to toe. We might be tempted to shake our fists and curse the clouds, scoff at the inaccuracies of the weather reports, or bemoan the state of the weather, as is the national pastime. Perhaps it behoves us to embrace it and celebrate it for what it is. Instead of trying to do the futile and impossible, perhaps we should strive to be soaked and happy, and maybe even learn to dance in the rain.
This post is not really about rain.
P.S.: My middle-grade novella, A Hollade Christmas, and my debut non-fiction book, Art Is The Way, are out everywhere now. You can get them in all good bookstores and from all major online vendors.