Calm and Happiness

       God, but I love rain.

       I love it.

       It was raining pretty hard today, and I was looking outside, watching the raindrops hit the ground and transform the world into wetness. And I wanted to be out there. So I stepped outside on the deck into the rain and let the rain drops hit me, one after another. It felt…good. Incredibly, amazingly good. It calmed me, made me happier, and somehow took away part of my exhaustion. Somehow, my normal surroundings also took on a new light. They looked…different than they usually did. And it wasn’t just the rain.

I went down to the ground, and the wet grass felt so different than normal against my bare feet. Usually, the grass feels hostile, prickling my feet, but today…today, the grass was soft and yielding, welcoming. I went down to the badminton court in my backyard, stepping through puddles of clear water, wading through small stream of muddy water. It was…beautiful. The ground had turned soft with the water, and everything looked fresher, somehow. I went back up to the higher level ground and decided to take a walk in the rain.

       It feels so much more personal to take a walk without shoes. Today, that’s just what I did. I went down through my neighborhood without shoes. Since it was raining, no one was outside. That was just what I loved about it. I went to the empty lot beside my lot first, which is home to a multitude of frogs. They have this song, this kind of “cro-o-o-a, cro-o-o-a” crooning that they do. But I’ve never heard that many of them sing their song. I guess…that was just something I really appreciated there.

       In my neighborhood, there is mostly dull, short, yellow grass that somehow seems to defy the laws of nature by always staying, nothing ever intruding upon it—not weeds, not flowers, nothing. But the rest of the grass in my neighborhood, that small minority, is a bright lush green that stands at least eight inches tall. In my neighborhood, the two are almost cruelly separated, even though there isn’t a line, a fence, or anything separating them but themselves. And yet today, when I looked, I saw some of that greenness seeping into the dull yellow. There wasn’t much, but it was still there. And I thought it a miracle of nature, even though others may not have seen it as such.

       I passed through another empty lot, and again there was that beautiful chorus of frog song. I went through some streets and went into part of my neighborhood that is still under development. This meant that there were plenty of small, sharp rocks to stab into my feet. But I didn’t care. Because afterwards, when I stepped into soft clay-mud…it felt absolutely wonderful. It wouldn’t have felt half as good if I had stepped into it from pure comfort. If I had just stepped in it in pure comfort, I would have thought somewhere along the lines of “oh, that feels pretty good”. But after putting my feet through the agony of walking over many small, sharp stones continuously, the cool, smooth, soft mud was relief and comfort and indulgence. I felt thankfulness for that mud, for assuaging the burning pain that had accumulated in my feet by that point.

       Going back, I noticed one of the private lots. It was split cleanly in half, one half looking like someone had painted the grass a monotonous yellow, perfectly cut, and the epitome of good grass. The other half grew wild, with different shades of greens, browns, yellows, and even blacks overlapping each other. It was the opposite of the other side, the wild, savage grass that no one wanted in their yard. And yet…I liked that grass more.

       I was by myself this entire time, and I enjoyed it. I still would like a friend, but for right now, I know that I’ll be fine keeping to myself. I know I’ll be fine thinking whatever I need to for the time being. I’m a solitary being, and I came to full terms with that today. I realized how little I really enjoy human company and how I despise it when they can’t comprehend the words coming out of my mouth and look at me with their blank faces. I realized how much I dislike the way society functions, and why I separate myself from it. I do think that I still should have a friend, but I can survive without one.

       Throughout all this, it was continually raining. In fact, I am still wet as I’m writing this. But that rain...it felt like it was washing away every sadness that I had ever experienced, like it was wiping me clean. It felt like it was ushering me out of the crowded room that was my life at that moment and pushing me into another, a life without worries or caring. I don’t know exactly why the rain made me feel like that, but it did. The rain is liberating. And at this point, I thought about Science Olympiad and how soon it was coming up, but all I felt was calm and a thought of “slow and steady wins the race”. Nothing like my normal tension and freaking out every hour of the night and day. It felt…good. Like I didn’t have a care in the world, like that for some few moments of time, I didn’t have anything pressing down on my shoulders. Not school, not extracurriculars, not expectations, nothing. I loved that feeling. For once, I wasn’t weighted down with the thoughts of my parents and what they would want me to do. For once, I wasn’t so caught up in the mundane world that I couldn’t enjoy what life had to offer. I felt free. I know I wasn’t, but it felt that way. I felt like there was nothing in the world that could bother me right at that moment. It’s so rare for me to be able to enjoy even a minute or two of my life like that. But today, I did. Because of the rain.

       And for all these reasons, I love the rain.

       I love the sunshine, too; in fact, I watched as the rain lessened and the last vestiges of the stormy cloak that covered the world melted into blue skies and white clouds. I watched as a clear blue was unveiled to the world once again. I watched as the sun reached down with its long fingers of gold and illuminated my backyard.

       But, as I have heard (or read, or seen) somewhere before, forget about the sunshine when it’s gone.

       I’m home again now, and I can feel that calm, that weird happiness slipping away through my fingers. Soon I’ll be caught up in my crazy life again, despising myself, stressed about too many things, tired once more. But I’ll keep this as a record of one of the few times I was by myself, enjoying and loving the world.

       Oh yes, and Happy New Year. (This is by the Chinese calendar. I very much respect the Chinese.)