Rain

A problem I share with with my daughter is a tendency to get obsessed with the weather. That's an unintended effect of being a huge fan of photography, and it can be hard to get rid of.

There are days when I feel like I'm drowning in a whole week of rainy weather. Very well, before we take out the rain coats, the weather can change quickly, and in what seems like minutes, the sky can be clear with new colours, leaving many oohs and aahs for the rainbow. What a cool way to kick-start a new day. But can you find the trap? (I'll give you a minute.) Here it is:

"It had been raining this afternoon, daddy," my daughter whined. "It's gone but where is the rainbow?"

I began to see a logic in this trap when I tried to give Jasmine a good answer. In most cases, we anticipate the light at the end of a bumpy journey. That's why we teach ourselves to keep our eyes on the rainbow. It's okay to get happy as a clam at high tide once in a while, but soon our mood will depend on the tide - to get high or low.

"I don't know why the rainbow didn't show up," I told Jasmine. "We can't control when the rain stops, much less if the rainbow comes out, ever. What can we decide? We decide whether we want to be happy."

She nodded.