I realise that I had forgotten what it feels like to be cold. That's not to say we had the most amazing summer ever, but feeling chilly came as a shock.
I was out today walking after rain, thinking the clouds had passed over; enjoying the cool, fresh feeling on my face, keeping my hands inside my sleeves, walking briskly to generate some heat. No actual brown leaves on trees yet, although there were a few on the ground, but a clear and definite Autumnal feel to the morning.
Then the clouds came back and it began to rain, quite heavily, just as I was collecting dandelion leaves for the (now 3) rabbits. Wearing a light down jacket, there was very limited protection from the rain. Grimacing, I hunkered down and headed for home, and then I remembered a saying I'd seen on a mug just a few days ago. Something like 'life isn't about keeping dry, it's about finding ways to have fun in the rain'. Darn, I wish I'd bought the mug, it was better expressed than that.
So I straightened up, came out of my impression of a tortoise retreating into its shell, and faced the rain without wincing. As someone said recently, it's only water after all. Then that wise man Epictetus came into my mind: 'men are not distressed by things, but by the views which they take of things' (or something very like that). What a difference it made when I changed my view of that rain from 'oh no!' to 'oh, ok'. It was that simple.
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