The Weight of Water

I was walking to the mailbox this morning when the sky suddenly opened up. I didn’t have an umbrella, and for a second, I felt that familiar, frantic urge to run for cover, to keep my clothes dry and my schedule intact. But then I stopped. I stood there on the sidewalk while the water soaked through my sweater, feeling the cold weight of it against my skin. It felt like a reset button. We spend so much of our lives trying to stay dry, trying to stay protected from the messy, unpredictable parts of the world. We build walls and carry shields, forgetting that sometimes the only way to really feel alive is to let the storm happen to us. There is a strange, quiet freedom in giving up the fight against the elements. When you stop trying to stay pristine, you finally have the space to notice how the world looks when it’s being washed clean. Do you remember the last time you let yourself get caught in the rain?

Shahnaz Parvin has captured this exact feeling of surrender in her beautiful image titled Rain-Soaked. It reminds me that there is so much joy to be found when we stop running for cover. Does this image make you want to step out into the downpour?