The day is Tuesday. July 10th. Here in Taichung, we await the arrival of Typhoon Maria, who seems to be escaping her planned parade of torrential rain and winds with an urgency that should be admired. Every time we think she’s coming our way, she throws us a curve ball and returns further north. Cancellations are left and right north of us, but not in Taichung. Taichung remains active, bustling and ready to go no matter what is thrown our way. Now that is a miracle.
I, to avoid the rain that would never come, decide to take the bus. I pile on bus eighteen after a single class that evening, sitting in and idle chair with my headphones in. Michelle Branch plays in my ear. Then the Weeknd. Next the 1975. Stop after stop, people exit and people come on, carrying dry umbrellas and wearing their rain shoes that barely squeak from the puddles outside. It’s sad, really: we’re all prepared for Maria, and yet here we are with the truth that she really won’t be coming. At least not with as much energy and vigor.
Most of us spend our entire lives waiting for things to come. We wait for that lottery ticket with the winning numbers. We wait for the “love of our lives” to wake up and admit their love for us one morning holding a bouquet of roses with dazzling desire filled gaze. We go to sleep at night praying for things to get better. And yet what do we do? Most of us do nothing.
Now, I will say one thing: circumstance is hard to conquer. But mindset is but a switch. There are those who look at the world through rose colored lenses, and those who choose the darkest shade of blue to hide their eyes. It matters less if we’re seeing the same thing, but more what we think of the shared object in front of us. The true successful people in life can look at something mangled and destroyed and see nothing but potential. And then, for some, it’s hard to see any potential in tattered, torn pieces of what used to be.
This is what scattered across my brain as I sat for twenty minutes on bus eighteen, waiting to go from the university swimming pool stop to the corner of Minquan and Jianxing. We choose to romanticize certain things in our lives. We can dance in the rain, instead of wallowing in how wet and cold it makes us feel. We can decide to be confident in ourselves and stand up tall when what we stand for is threatened or challenged. Literally every thing is dependent upon what you think when you wake up and look out your window. You are the sole reason you are or aren’t happy each and every day.
So next time you wake up, see scattered clouds across the sky with that one little ray of sunshine finding its way through the sea of storms, what will you think? Will you worry for the storm that is coming or admire the sunshine for persevering in the midst of it all?
