The advantages and beauty of a gray, rainy, November day

Admittedly when that title popped into my mind this morning, I had a one-word answer: NONE

But the thought kept buzzing around in my head as I went to the post office for the mail, to a friend’s house to deliver some magazines and to the service station for gas. And I actually thought of a few (in no particular order, and with no evident importance).

• The glory of not having to leave a warm house.
• Paradoxically, the fun of leaving said house for lunch with family or friends – when the skies are gray and the weather unwelcoming, the warmth of one’s fellow humans is even more precious.
• Not wanting to be out and about means cleaning a drawer instead offing shopping, thus producing two benefits: no money spent; a clean and tidy draw.
• The excuse to not rake the leaves.
• The lack of guilt at taking the car instead of walking.
• The few remaining leaves seem like beaming spots of color in the gray.
• The cloud patterns are interesting.
• My sister’s wind chimes gently remind me of the presence in my heart of those who are no longer physically here.

Then I decided to “look for the beauty” in that gray and discovered that if you do look, you will find it – including the light rainbow on the lake and the spot of sun that appeared (just for me: I would like to think that it was my reward for taking the question seriously) for two minutes.

And I couldn’t help but take the thought a step further: what if when our lives seem full of only dreary gray events, we actually looked for the beauty – we would probably find it. So from now on (most days anyway) I’ll strive to, instead of seeing the gray, look for the spots of beauty – it can only improve my mood like those fifteen minutes this morning.