Whatever the weather

      It was a thin grey rain: hard and fast and cold ... as was my custom in such elements, I hunched against the rain, drew my head into my collar, turned my eyes to the street, tensed my footsteps and proceeded in misery. But my hosts, I soon realised, reacted in quite another way. They strolled calmly and smoothly, their bodies perfectly relaxed. They did not lurch their faces to it and did not flinch as it drummed their cheeks. They almost revelled in it. Somehow I found this significant. They accepted the rain. They were not at odds with it, they did not deny it or combat it, they accepted it and went with it in harmony and ease.

      I tried it myself. I relaxed my neck and shoulders and turned my gaze into the wet. I let it do to me what it would.  It was simply falling as rain, and I, as a man, another phenomenon of nature, was sharing the space in which it fell. I was much better regarding it that way. I got no wetter!