A lesson from Rain

I emerged from the music store where I work after closing to find it raining outside. It had been raining all day and now at quarter to nine it was still coming down hard. It is on days like these that the pretty girls stay inside and your car windows fog up. I also have these intolerable windshield wipers that do a lot more squeaking than wiping. Almost nobody likes the rain, but it is the price you pay if you want to live in Vancouver. So, here I was, standing under the shelter of the store awning and contemplating the best strategy to get to my car without being utterly drenched, when Scott, my coworker, also stepped out of the store. He drew in a deep breath and sighed with satisfaction.

"I love the rain," he said.

I looked at him, incredulous that anyone could say such a thing.

He continued, "I love how the rain makes everything smell so fresh. In places like the praries or in Alberta where it doesn't rain for a long time there is a lot of build up of dirt and grime. But here, everything is so clean because the rain washes it all away- the salts that are on the ground, the dust and the pollution. The rain keeps the place clean. The rain also keeps everything green. That's why everything is so green around here."

It then struck me that the very thing that people hate about Vancouver, the constant rain, is what makes the place so beautiful. What people find to be insufferable is also inseparable from what they love. What irony. Maybe life's like that. Perhaps even the very things that cause us grief, consternation, and pain are somehow not without meaning, but, in some paradoxical way, necessary to keep the whole thing together. I don't mean "just look for the good in the bad" but what if what we see as "bad" is just part of the package? Part and parcel to the marvel of being alive?

After saying goodbye to Scott, I picked up an old "Georgia Strait" for shelter and ran across the street to my car, wondering if he knew what a valuable lesson I had been taught.