A few weeks ago I was out for a walk with my youngest daughter on a beautiful sunny day. We were going for a much longer walk around the neighbourhood to fill time, until we would eventually have to pick up her older sister at school. We threw on our sandals and hats and went out in the sunshine.
Things were going well and we’d walked pretty far when suddenly the weather changed unexpectedly. Clouds came overhead, became dark quickly, and the rain came. It wasn’t one of those light showers. It was pouring down; raining cats and dogs. And we had left the umbrella at home.
Considering the route we had taken from home to school, we were only half way through the walk. If we ran back home then we’d be late to pick up my older daughter, and I was sure she’s be worried or upset if we weren’t there waiting for her at the school gate. The rain kept coming down, and as my three year old looked up at me- lip trembling and about to cry- I made a decision: we were going to have fun. We weren’t going to be grumpy or uncomfortable. It was warm outside, it was still a beautiful day, and we weren’t going to get cold in the summer heat. We ran and raced through the rain, jumped in the puddles, and laughed hard about how our clothes were completely soaked.
My daughter went from almost crying, to jumping with sheer joy!
We got to school and waited by the gate while the torrential rain kept coming down. I caught glimpse of two little pigtails, and my little purple-backpack-wearing-girl came running towards me. We quickly explained the new game: we were going to walk home in the rain and have fun. We were already wet, so why not enjoy it?
Okay, a story about getting caught in the rain is pretty cliché.
Obviously this is a pretty trivial problem, and life throws much bigger obstacles our way. But it’s a good thing to think about. Sometimes we have an idea about how things might unfold in our lives, however we all know that plans can change and even unravel. Perhaps a vision we had for our job or our family isn’t what we thought it would be. These problems could be short-term and frustrating, or they might be more serious life-altering experiences. Even when plans change, we can still choose happiness for ourselves. Maybe rather then striving for unmovable goals and set-in-stone-plans, we can strive to be happy and the rest will come.
“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
-G.K. Chesterton
