Everyone who comes to visit me seems to comment on just how beautiful this town is. I’m glad, because I keep forgetting. All of my life I’ve been a little—shall we say—particular; so even though I live in a town that is known throughout Orange County to have the ‘best climate in the whole state year round’ as many natives have told me—repeatedly, I can’t seem to let it sink in.
You see I’m a forest lover, and a thunderstorm aficionado, so I can be inclined to gloss over the perfect weather, clean temperate air, beautiful ocean, and just generally tranquil and uplifting vibe this town has to offer, because well, I miss the rain. I miss the precipitation and the mystery; what will the sky offer up today? Will it be hail? A storm? Fog? In Connecticut sometimes you get all three in the same day! And you never know what’s coming next.
By contrast in Cali, the answer is always the same: it’s going to be perfect, and blue and just down right paintable! So after awhile, for someone like me, who is used to setting his internal clock by the four changing seasons of the year on the east coast, the perfect southern California climate starts to feel like an extended director’s cut of Groundhog Day. But the only aspect to keep repeating itself is the weather. That smug, relentless, perfect weather.
I’m sitting in the bright tropical, sunny southern CA weather of San Clemente and wishing I was in a rainstorm in CT. My brother-in-law and my mom are sitting on my sister’s front porch. They sent me videos and I can hear the large rain droplets pelting their metal porch like so many meteors showering down upon us. It’s magnificent. But it also just happens to be a reflection of an ‘issue’ I’ve been working…living more in the present moment; enjoying the here and now; being where I am, etc. etc.
So I’m grateful that all my visitors continue to be captivated; that the beauty here, however much I may at times overlook it, continues to take their breath away. It reminds me to wipe the wishes and dust from my eyes, and be thankful for my present moment. The sky may not open as much out here as I’d like it to. But there are worse things to endure than perpetual perfection and glorious Southern California beauty.
So the lesson here is that I can control how I perceive things. As all my friends point out, I can notice the quite apparent beauty. Or I can wish for far away storms. Bottom line, I am choosing to feel gratitude from now on, and I’m doing that, rain or shine.
