Watching for the Sunbreaks

We all experience those stormy days: when disappointment hits, or when we experience unbearable loss. At those times, it’s natural to take the strategy of just gritting our teeth and bearing it the best we can. But sometimes we can also project the hope that dark days will pass and when they do, the light and colors will be all the brighter and vibrant, just like sunlight piercing a rainy landscape. And just maybe we might be in a better position to refract good things more directly towards us because we experienced those hard times.

We’ve had a couple of days of lovely rain and cooler temperatures, which, you can probably guess by the fact that I’m living in Oregon, makes me quite happy. In fact, I grew up in a relatively dry intermountain Western state which received very little rain, so when it did rain as a kid, it was kind of exciting. We’d stay in the classroom during recess and play Heads up Seven up that our teachers would be good enough to organize for us. And though it rains a lot more where I am now, I still get a special thrill out of rainy days.

One of my favorite elements of a rainy day is when the sun breaks free of the clouds that keep it hidden. When the sun breeches the bank of clouds and sends sunbeams against the water droplets on trees and the streets and buildings. Somehow, the light and colors seem so much more vibrant than they are one cloudless sunny days. And you know, there’s actually a scientific reason why that is. It’s not just in our heads or that we are used to darker skies and so we takes us a while for our eyes to readjust.

Light travels in a straight line unless it hits a substance of a different density than the material that it’s currently traveling through. A change, say, like sunlight traveling through the sky and encountering water droplets on pine needles on a pine tree. When the sunlight encounters the water droplets the light is reflected, or in others words bent into a more direct angle. So that means that more of the colors that strike the needles on the pine tree, like overall dark greens in the case of the pine tree, are reflected back to our eyes. So the colors actually do appear brighter and more vibrant.

I wonder if there are some ways we can reflect some of those principles from that natural phenomenon into the way we deal with dark times in our lives too. We all experience those stormy days: when disappointment hits, or when we experience unbearable loss, or when we are sick or afraid or angry at ourselves, others, or the world in general. At those times, it’s natural to think the best strategy is to just grit our teeth and bear it the best we can. And sometimes that’s all we can do, and that’s okay. But sometimes we can also project the hope that dark days will pass and when they do, the light and colors will be all the brighter and vibrant, just like sunlight piercing a rainy landscape. And just maybe we might be in a better position to refract good things more directly towards us because we experienced those hard times.