Something that feels surprisingly refreshing is when it’s been windy and rainy and you have to walk a long way to get home. The rain stops and the wind pummels your clothes in all directions, slowly drying it out and making your body feel all numb. By the time you get home, you’re completely dry and slightly dizzy from the wind pushing you back for the past hour or so.

At my school, there’s this girl I only know a little. She always comes up with those sorts of philosophical ideas, most of them the typical “Do you think you see the colour blue the same way I do?”, but other times she comes up with some really thought provoking stuff. We were sitting in English and she said,

“The only way you can be truly happy is if you enjoy all weather, even rain.”

I thought about this for a while, and realised that it’s true. You wake up in the morning and see a beautiful sunny day. You don’t think “Oh god, here comes another crappy day…”. You feel positive and motivated, before the day has even begun. On grey depressing days, you just know it’s only going to get worse. It’s going to rain, your feet will get wet, your hair will be a mess, you’re going to be sitting in a puddle…

Life’s like that. Good things happen and you become motivated. You’re invincible. But the second something not so good happens, you’re apathetic and cannot be bothered doing anything. Life throws our brains off track. We’re really not designed for changes. Brains may hold terabytes of information but they can’t seem to deal with very much at once. We don’t have much brain ram.

Anyway, what I’m trying to get across is that you have to look at everything in life in a positive way. That often seems impossible, but it can be done. Maybe there was a reason that bad thing happened to you. Maybe you’ll be better off in the future. Maybe you learned from it. And mayhaps, you’ll start to appreciate life a bit more. Once you enjoy the rain, everything is more fun. There are more possibilities. It’s raining. So what? Some things feel better after the rain. Some pleasures feel more amazing when the pain has subsided.