Expanding Your Capacity for Life

I was sitting at my home office desk today finishing up some work and - being a faithful child of the 70's - listening to a Beatles CD. One of the songs - Rain - has always been my among my favorites. But today the words hit me with particular meaning.

I've had a difficult several years. Like many of us, I've faced a number of personal challenges and the going has often been tough. A few times, I've been ready to throw in the towel, find an easier way or a less constructive way to deal with the issues I faced. Today, as I listened to Rain, it reinforced for me how we may limit ourselves if we struggle against the trials that confront us. Some of the lyrics are:

If the rain comes, they run and hide their heads
They might as well be dead
If the rain comes
If the rain comes
When the sun shines, they slip into the shade
And sip their lemonade
When the sun shines
When the sun shines.
Rain, I don't mind.
Shine, the weather's fine
I can show you that when it starts to rain
Everything's the same
I can show you
I can show you
Can you hear me that when it rains and shines
It's just a state of mind
Can you hear me

Much of the time life itself is like the weather. When it's fall and the weather is cold and rainy we wish it were summer and the weather was hot. When it's summer and the sun's beating down we wish it was fall and that we could feel the brisk north winds.

There were two lessons for me in these lyrics. The first is similar to the old saying, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. We tend to look at what we don't have rather than what we do. The second and perhaps more profound lesson is that we severely limit our capacity to enjoy life when we struggle against what is.

If we say we will only enjoy our life if the sun shines, but there are occasional clouds to periodically shade us and if the temperature stays between 68 and 75 degrees, and the wind between 3 and 5 mph., we will enjoy very little of it. Running away from the sun when it shines and the rain when it falls significantly narrows our capacity for experience. It suggests that we're always running and never being.

Is it always fun standing in the rain? No. Would it be fun to never have any weather changes, always experiencing the monotony of perfect weather? No. Is there a better way to deal with the weather changes than spending all of our time running from them? I think so.

I think it's interesting that, as a child, I didn't mind the rain at all. I'd play outside in it, splash in the puddles and make little rivers in the dirt. When summer came, I'd play in the hot sun all day - playing baseball, biking, swimming. Even when I was in my early 20's I could play three hours of tennis in 80 degree weather. I think as I became older, I became culturalized. It wasn't a "good" idea to play outside in the rain. It might not be a "good" idea for me to play so hard in the hot sun all day.

I believe the better way may be learning to experience "weather changes" as a part of life. If we learn to accept the changes in our lives as part of the flow of life's river, it takes some of the burden off us to keep trying to "change the weather" by running to shelter. And I think it's good to remember that we can't always change the weather - but we can change our reaction to it.