“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” — Anais Nin
I was standing in a checkout line recently, and heard the woman in front of me complaining to the cashier that it was “a terrible day outside.” She looked perfectly miserable as she gazed out the window and frowned at the rain.
I began to think about how when we have a sunny day, we might say, “What a nice day it is today” and when we have other sorts of weather, the kinds of weather most people don’t like, we might say, “What a terrible day!” In reality, the day is just a day. We’re the ones who endow it with certain meaning and give it adjectives. But what if someone likes the rain, or the dampness or dark clouds? Is it a “terrible” day to them? Are the adjectives we use describing the day, or describing us?
Why is it that we don’t look outside at the rain and say, What a beautiful day?