Rain

Now, don't get me wrong. I love rain as a concept (washing the world clean and making the flowers grow) and I enjoy it personally sometimes. Summer rains that alleviate the oppressive heat and lend themselves to dancing, for example.

Today is not one of those times.
I'm tired and not thrilled with the world to start with and it's one of those cold, windy rains where you need to be wearing a winter coat and your umbrella will turn itself inside out if you try to use it.
Now, I walk nearly everywhere. Most places I need to go are within a mile of where I live, so it's faster and easier to just walk and I do need the exercise.

This presents a few possible situations when I cross the road in the rain.
One, there may be no cars coming from either direction and I just cross.
Two, there are a few but there are gaps after them that I can clearly use to cross.
Three, there's a straight line of cars and someone makes eye contact and sees that I'm waiting and chooses to keep going anyway.
Four, there's a straight line of cars and someone makes eye contact and sees that I'm waiting and smiles and waves me through.
Five, something else (but this doesn't happen as often and/or I don't notice it as much and is not my point of discussion anyway).

Three and four are what I'm thinking about today. It's amazing, that one little decision can make a huge difference.
If someone sees me standing all miserably in the cold rain and chooses to ignore it, that makes me a bit grumpy and I've got that attitude as my lens for viewing the world for the rest of the day.
If someone sees me standing all miserably and lets me go first, I feel such a sense of...joy isn't quite the right word, but it's the best I can get. That one little thing can make me smile and feel happy through the rest of my day.

That one little thing can make or kill someone's day and I don't think the driver of the car realizes that either way. It doesn't make a huge difference for me physically (I get a tiny bit more wet the first way but I have a long enough walk that it's not noticeable) or for them (I kind of dash across because I don't want to hold people up or get hit by a car) but it can change my point of view.

And I'm working really hard to keep that in mind when I do things.  Because really, if you can make someone's day brighter, why on earth wouldn't you?

How about you? Is there a tiny thing someone can do that makes a real difference to you? And how do you feel about the rain?