It's raining. A miracle in itself. I hope it helps the plants and trees. When I heard it last night, I jumped out of bed and went to a window and listened to be certain. It's a gentle rain, but the sound is definitely right speech. It reminds me not to catastrophize (my own word) and to take each day as it comes. Years ago my Zen teacher instructed us to avoid "always" and "never" as descriptors. She had us saying "Up until now" instead, as in up until now I have not won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Absolutism is depressing and restricting. Each moment is new and alive with possibilities. If we forget that, we fail to treasure life.
So I don't indulge in drought talk much, and though I am attempting to conserve water, I don't like to speculate on whether we might have more rain and certainly not about El Nino next fall or weather patterns. It looks to me like weather patterns are in large part imagination. Breaking weather patterns is also a pattern.
Now talking about the weather as an ice breaker socially is tried and true, but it's a trope, not genuine weather interest. It hopefully steers us toward more genuine conversations. "How about this drought!" can only take us so far, and tells us nothing about who we are. But what if one time, I said to you "Up until now there has been a lack of rain..."? Wouldn't you be jolted a little teeny bit out of your asleep at the wheel brain? Wouldn't you at least wonder who is this cockeyed optimist? And wouldn't that be a good thing?
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