Rain or Shine

Rain or Shine

Strange weather today: rain and sunshine at the same time. I always find that disconcerting, as if parallel universes were suddenly overlapping, and I had one foot in each. Wearing sunglasses while holding an umbrella is an odd feeling. It could be a metaphor for confusion from a negative point of view, or for a time of transition if I wanted to interpret it more positively--which brings to mind a Beatles lyric: "Can you hear me, that when it rains and shines, it's just a state of mind?" And that reminds me of a Shakespeare line: "Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so." The meaning of any event, even something as mundane as the weather, is neutral (for me) until I make a judgment about it. And who am I, with my necessarily limited mind and point of view, to judge? I think I'm much more comfortable with the idea of "discernment" rather than "judgment." Discernment, according to the dictionary, is the "power to see what is not evident." That's a skill worth developing, I think. So while I might judge today's weather confusing, what's "evident," is that it's actually just a symptom of the season's contradictory nature. Yeah, I actually think about things like that while squinting in a rain shower.
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