Student Life: Reflections of a rainy day

Is it possible to truly appreciate something while you're in the middle of it?

This question has been in my mind ever since the marathon rain session we had last week. After all, what better time to reflect on sunnier days than in the middle of a cold, wet, gray haze?

I woke up each rain-soaked morning and was continually disappointed by what I saw. Two columns of water on each road were siphoning the excess rain to the city's sewers. The sky was a monotonous and melancholy blanket of gray. And even the strongest smiles eventually faded into limp frowns after a few days.

It seemed as if the sun had been buried too deep beneath the clouds to ever shine again. Was this purgatory of precipitation some sort of divine sign, an omen of darker days to come? Then - suddenly! - I awoke Sunday morning to find that the light switch in the sky had been inexplicably turned on. All that I saw was drenched in a warm, sunny, orange glow. Could it be that the tyranny of bad weather was finally overthrown?

When I walked to campus that afternoon, it was like the first time. The squirrels were grayer, the grass greener, and the leaves redder than I'd ever seen before - it was like stepping inside some surreal Disney cartoon. During the entire walk, I thought to myself: Why have I never noticed how beautiful this place is? I've walked that path so many times, and yet, something was different.

Surely the landscape hadn't changed. The same trees had always been there. The carefully arranged flowers hadn't suddenly upped themselves and changed locations. Even the graveyard next to campus seemed infinitely more solemn and beautiful, yet those stones were set in the dirt many, many years ago.

What, then, had changed? It was my perception of things, not anything in the physical world. Trees, leaves, squirrels, and graves are all simply "stuff." They can't change their appearance. But they can take on new meanings when looked at through a different lense, and the unrelenting rain had fostered in me a new appreciation for dry, sunny days.

The pleasant weather also got me thinking about facets of my life that I'd previously taken for granted. For example: I eat lunch every day in the Rat with a recurrent cast of friends. Though it's only an hour or so of my day, it's usually what I look forward to most. But I had to miss over a week of these lunches due to job training. When I was finally able to join in again, it was as if I'd been away for years.

Memory has a tendency to glamorize and gloss over the past. We generalize certain periods of our life and form an easy-to-swallow opinion of them: kindergarten was a time for play, middle school was a mixture of work and fun, and high school an awkward stumble toward adulthood. But by reflecting and looking back on these times, we see what had been previously invisible. The benefit of hindsight and maturity allows us to see how all of our experiences have all had real, tangible effects on us. We just didn't know it at the time.

Although it's hard to admit, everything in life, even youth, eventually comes to an end.It's vital to realize the simple, daily pleasures. All you need to do is step back for a moment (yes, put down the paper) and allow everything around you to sink in: the cool air, the floating conversations, the shade of the trees.

Who knows what kind of weather tomorrow will bring?