Caught in the Rain

Caught in the Rain

On Thursday morning, I was caught in the rain. It was a good downpour and I had to catch the bus to go to the Lotus Centre for my Energy Exchange. I am a Reiki Practitioner at the Lotus Centre, but I also do Energy Exchange every Thursday in return for yoga. On my trip to the Lotus Centre on Thursday, I felt like I learned some good lessons from observing how people reacted to ‘being caught in the rain.’

As I stood and waited for the bus in the rain, early Thursday morning, I watched as cars zoomed by and water splashed on the sidewalk from the puddles, sometimes hitting pedestrians walking. I myself stepped back a few times into the bus shelter to avoid being hit with water off the road by the cars.

As I stepped back into the bus shelter one of these times, a man in the bus shelter grumbled:

‘I think they’re (the drivers) all trying to get us. I’d love to have them all stand on the sidewalk while I drive by and hit them with water!’

He was stuck in the rain and was angry about the drivers who didn’t seem to notice the pedestrians and blamed ‘them’ for his being wet.

Have you ever noticed that people say ‘they’ and ‘they did it’ a lot when they are angry in general but don’t have anyone to blame? I heard this a lot when I used to work in a call centre and people would say ‘you sent this’ and ‘you did this to me…’ It took me awhile to realize back then that it wasn’t really me that they were talking about. They were angry in general about something the company did (i.e. error on a bill) but they needed someone or something to receive this anger.

Later, on my walk to the Lotus Centre from Oxford, I noticed some more people who were ‘caught in the rain.’ One guy didn’t have an umbrella. It was interesting because he didn’t run, he didn’t even walk quickly. He just walked normally as the rain poured down on him. I realized at that moment, that he had complete acceptance of the situation. It was raining, he didn’t have an umbrella, and he was just in the moment and accepted it for what it was.

Moments like this make me think of the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. In this book, we are reminded that all we really have is this one moment. The past is gone, and the future isn’t here yet. All we have is NOW. While I observed the man walk through the rain in complete acceptance, I admired him. He could have ran (like many people would have done), he could have cursed his bad luck for ending up in the rain without an umbrella, but instead, he just walked and was completely in the moment.

The next question I asked myself is, if I only have THIS moment and I am caught in the rain, what is the best way to enjoy this? I had an umbrella but was going to be hit with water by passing cars no matter what I did. So, I held onto my umbrella and sang ‘Summertime’ (a favourite jazz tune) to myself as I enjoyed the view of the river as I passed over the bridge.

The biggest lesson that I learned on this trip to the Lotus Centre in the rain is that when life gives us a ‘downpour,’ it is us who decides how we react to it. We can curse our ‘bad luck;’ have acceptance and just move on; or we can shrug our shoulders and hum a tune, making the best of every situation that we experience.

- Shyra Rawson, Reiki Practitioner