Rain Showers, Rainbows and the Return of Basic Goodness
About 2 years ago, I took my first meditation class. The instructor started off by talking about some of the reasons for meditation, its purpose, its promise.
One theme that featured prominently in his talk was using meditation to help access a basic goodness that exists in all of us and in all the world around us. Frankly, I had trouble relating. What exactly did he mean?
When asked to consider this idea and to share any such experiences that we may have had, some of the students told stories from childhood. They spoke of having the feeling that all is good in the world just the way it is. They spoke of a child-like openness to the world and all its wonder.
I kinda got it, but not fully. I tried to access similar experiences and feelings but came up empty. Maybe I was just too jaded, too blind. But, I continued to work with the idea and to gently search for basic goodness; or should I say at least be open to seeing it when it did manifest.
Basic goodness made a resounding re-entrance into my life just the other day thanks to my 15 year old daughter Gabriella. We drove into NYC together. It was a warm but rainy afternoon. Lots of sun mixed with intermittent, but strong, rain showers. At times it was very difficult to see. The windshield wipers were going at full speed as we moved along at 40 mph—not the most pleasant driving conditions to say the least.
Then, as quickly as it had started, the downpour stopped. The clouds blew over and the sun cast rays of light through the slowly parting clouds. Just as the rain lifted, a calm came over the air and Gabi excitedly said, “Ooh, maybe we’ll see a rainbow.”
As her words reached my ears my body flared with complete and total awareness. There it was—the essence of basic goodness as expressed and embodied by this beautiful child.
As the beams of sunlight made their way through the clouds, Gabi excitedly scanned the sky in search of a rainbow. I joined the search was well. And so, there we were, a father and a daughter searching the sky for a rainbow after a summer’s rain. Truly a moment that expressed the basic goodness of the world just as it is.
We didn’t actually see a rainbow that day. But it didn’t matter a bit because the sense of basic goodness that came just from looking for it was more than enough.
[I know. This post has absolutely nothing to do with the world of IT. That’s correct! Sometimes, you just gotta be real.]
