“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about dancing in the rain.”

My power was off for about 30 hours recently. I lost most of the groceries in my small fridge, but thankfully all that was really in there were cans of Slimfast! Several other families I know weren’t so lucky. They’re already struggling financially and losing a freezer with a month’s groceries was just one more straw on the growing pile.

My whole life seems to revolve around email and the internet since I mostly work online. Without power my only alternative was to work from my laptop in a hot van since the library didn’t open until 10 a.m. Too hot to sleep. Too hot to work. But not too hot to drive around the country side with the breeze in my face, so I did.

I stopped to get gas and a cup of coffee at the local gas station. It was packed since it was the only station in 20 miles with power. I anticipated the gripping and complaining and wasn’t surprised to hear it all around me this morning as customers complained to clerks and each other. Some areas regained their power and others did not and the “fairness” of it was a major topic of conversation. My area did not get power. After the hospitals, nursing homes and apartment complexes industrial and retirement areas were near the end of the list. There was a lot of anger and frustration as people’s days dawned dark and hot, but there was one guy who prompted me to find the quote I did and to write this post.

I’m not going to be a Pollyanna here, but I am going to point out, as I like to do, that how you think about what is happening to you can change what happens after the bad stuff goes down. The guy who inspired me was someone I ran into at the gas station early this morning. He was laughing as he told the clerk “Power outages are God’s way of telling me to go fishing.” Seems instead of bemoaning the fact the power wouldn’t be on until noon that was all the reason he needed to take a few hours to hit his favorite fishing hole. It was like a kid waking up to snow and thinking “No classes!!”

“I can’t get anything done at the office, so why get angry? It is what it is,” he grinned. “And I can worry just as much in my boat as I can sitting in a hot office in the dark.” He grabbed his purchases and headed off. He planned to fish until about 10 or 11 when the fish stop biting anyway, and then head back in to see if the power was up. It’s my guess that when he returned and the power was on that he was in a much better frame of mind and would just work a little later or better to make up for the so called “lost morning.”

I like his attitude. The looks around the cash register (the stores did have power, the industrial area where I am, did not) were ones of envy. “Oh, how I wish I could do that,” I saw people thinking.

What he did, and what I strive to do is to learn to dance in the rain. It’s why I got out of the van to look at the stars at 3 a.m. With no lights around for 40 miles they were brighter than I’ve seen them in a long time. It’s why I got up at 5 a.m. to drive to the library so I could stop at the bridge that crosses the James River and watch the sunrise. I was up anyway. Might as well enjoy it!

Are you dancing in the rain? Or cursing it? You might want to try to find a reason to splash in the puddles. Something bigger and better might come out of fishing rather than sitting in a dark office, or star-gazing instead of tossing and turning in the heat of a night without air-conditioning. It’s up to you.