One more day in the life of a pessimist

I started the day soaking wet, spent a lot of the day damp and cold and the rest sticky and uncomfortable. I got a worse mark than I excepted on an assignment, unknowingly wrote my notes across a piece of paper that was torn through the middle, discovered my notebook had been open to where the large words “semen as a national resource” were written for an entire tutorial, cursed the fact that the library was full of strangely eager students again (its week 5 for goodness sake!) got a persistent blister from my new shoes and then got absolutely drenched by father sky all over again.

This is the pattern, you see, of negativity, that my life, my thoughts and ultimately this blog seems to be following. I’m depressed then confused, I’m lost and directionless, I wonder what it all means and poke fun at the emptiness, complain this went wrong and that went wrong and declare this, these revolutionary words, are what I’ll do - one day - when I discover I’m capable of anything and from deep inside me an amazingly talented person emerges. Blahblahblah, blogblogblog, there she goes again, just another day in the life of this committed pessimist.

Except it wasn’t. The day neither dragged nor raced. It rained and I got saturated, drenched at nearly mythic proportions. I smiled, I laughed, I breathed the good air.

Rain isn’t pessimistic, it’s hopeful. It’s an integral part of the circle of life, it draws fresh sprouts from barren earth, recovers the life from the charred remains of bush, cleans dusty cars in parking lots, brings children out to play, paints rainbows across the sky and makes tiny patches of blue sky seem more bluer and beautiful than ever.

And yet rain makes people angry, grumpy, wet and damp, depressed and dreary.

I like rain. I even love rain. I like the way the sky gets fatter and fatter until it finally bursts torrents of water from its big grey belly. I love watching it get hotter and greyer and hotter until it’s unbearably hot and grey and the clouds finally stop teasing and let the cool water come down. I revel in days when I awake snuggled in my bed, my cold pink nose sticking out just far enough to smell the rain coming down and eagerly anticipate those cold days when the wind whips through the city bringing gushes of leaves, rubbish and eventually, good old rain.

Sure rain can be angry; it treats you like a fish and then expects you to smile at some ridiculous rainbow. It stings your face, freezes your hands and finds a way under even the toughest of coats. Sometimes it might rain and rain for so long or with such intensity that it fills rivers and streets until the cars and houses are washed away. It ruin’s picnics, wet’s dry washing, seeps through shoes, makes roads slippery underfoot and altogether gets in the way of things.

It’s falling just to make you late, it aims only to drench you, it exists purely to make you cold and damp.

And yet I don’t wait for the sun to come out for life to be beautiful again, I love watching the rain.

Perhaps it’s just because, like all committed pessimists, when the storm clouds roll in, when the rain falls heavily, the sun sets or the pounding thunder claps boom, a certain optimist inside me smiles.

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.....