From an unlikely place one would expect to find a morsel of wisdom, I found one posted on the wall of the auto service shop I go to for an oil change. It is not even on a frame but on an 8-1/2 by 11 piece of paper, already yellowed with age, thumb-tacked to the wall.
I've been going to this auto shop for almost three decades now because it is located near where we used to live and for the two honest gentlemen in the auto repair business, if you can believe it, who ran it. And this shop works only on one brand of vehicles exclusively. We've since moved to another home over 15 miles away but I still go there for routine maintenance service because my wife and I continue to own vehicles made by the same automaker.
As to be expected there had been some changes at this shop. First, one partner retired about four years ago. One of the senior mechanics bought the partner's share of the business. Last year the older partner also retired and sold his share to the same mechanic who is now the sole owner.
The new owner and his wife now have two grown sons. The wife quit her old office job to help run the business. The used-to-be all male office not only has a feminine touch now, there is a computer and printer and new furniture. The wife catalogued customer data where she can now retrieve all the information based solely on the license plate the same way that big franchise auto dealerships do.
I needed to go through the short narrative as a way to put some context to the quote above. The framed quote is just one of several - most are funny quips - that now adorn various sections of the office walls. Except for this one, all others are in simple frames but this was the quote that caught my eye.
"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain."
I was going to ask the wife why she picked that quote to be posted on that wall but she was not working that day. To pass the time while waiting I thought, or speculated, about what the quote must mean to the new owners - the former mechanic now owner of the business, the wife who now runs the front office. I imagined they had their share of stormy days of working for a living and raising those two boys well into adulthood and taking over a business in midlife. That quote must mean a lot to the couple. I won't know until the next time which would be in a few months or 3,000 miles later on the odometer, whichever comes first. Anyway, my imagined version of their story would be as good a facsimile of their real-life journey.
I assumed the quote was anonymously written. What I found later through a quick search was interesting. It turned out that framed versions of the quote are commercially available. Many are anonymously presented and a few have an author ascribed to it. Vivian Greene - "is a visionary, artist, author and entrepreneur who spreads her messages of greater love and awareness to everyone on the planet.", according to her Facebook intro - is credited for having written it.
I encourage the reader to look into Vivian Greene's extraordinary life. For me it is enough that she wrote that quote and her advocacy for young children around the world is commendable.
The quote will mean different things to different people. Is it just another way of saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"? A quote that is also considered anonymously written, although Dale Carnegie in 1948 did say something similar. Or, is it not just another way of encouraging positive thinking?
We have all gone through all kinds of storms throughout our lives. Not the literal storm but as metaphorical manifestations of life's trials, challenges, relationship and emotional issues that seemed insurmountable if not paralyzing. Of course, as is often the case, since you are reading this, the storms you've been through did indeed blow over and you managed to survive them. Sometimes, the storms were just made up of incessant worrying over something or many things that simply went away after some length of time had elapsed. Truth be told, most of what we worried about never happened and there was not much we can do with those that did, so why worry at all?
There are instances, of course, where the storms are real. A failed relationship, loss of a loved one, a dead end job or worse a job loss, an illness, and so many other unfortunate circumstances are a few we can cite. We can wait for these kinds of storms to pass and they could or might blow over. However, if all we did was wait, the storms may linger in place to strengthen further or bring even more rain. On the other hand, if we merely waited for it to blow over and it did, was it not the thing to do?
Or, there is another way - a more proactive, even productive way - which was perhaps what Ms. Greene meant. Accept the circumstances that brought the storm, take shelter at the storm's peak and temporary ferocity, then go out and learn to deal with the rain; learning to dance in the rain is a powerful analogy of how one may cope with the challenges.
At the loss of a loved one, we take the time to mourn; allow for a moment to be angry at a failed relationship at the storm's peak. The loss of a job will always feel like a failure but it must not be treated like the end of a career so one must allow for time to pass, but not for too long. In other words one must not wait for puddles to be completely gone or for the ground to be thoroughly bone dry before stepping out. It seems like I am throwing in more analogies but the quote can be a compelling guardrail to guide us along life's journey when encountering and coping with stormy days.
What about those born in the daily storms of abject poverty, or abuse and neglect, in an inescapable environment of hopelessness and despair? We hear and know of extraordinary individuals who managed to unshackle themselves from the grip of the daily storms and drenching rain. For sure those who learned to dance in the rain must have been fortunate to have learned it from others who loved and cared for them.
From one of the interviews, Vivian Greene answered when asked if she has any children with, "Yes! I even have some to spare for you! I first began in the early '80's with Foster Parent Plan which had about 200,000 children in the program. Then it was $22 a month to support a child. Today it's called Plan International and has about 55 MILLION children. Isn't that incredible?"
"Plan International is a development and humanitarian organization based in the United Kingdom that works in over 75 countries across Africa, the Americas, and Asia, focusing on children’s rights."
Actually, it did strike a chord for me personally after my wife was diagnosed with Parkinson's two years ago. That was one unexpected storm. Six years before that she had to go through a lumpectomy on one breast. Two big storms indeed. Fortunately, long before I discovered this quote at an auto shop, both she and I had somehow learned to dance in the rain. Not well at first and then as life goes on we try to cope as best we can and keep learning new dance steps as called for but we must keep dancing.
As I've written in one of my earlier musings, the ticket price to living longer is to grow old plus the inevitable surcharges of aches and pains and the stormy visitation of an unexpected diagnosis followed by drenching rains. That's when we need to learn to dance in the rain.
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