Grace

There is a saying: “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Applying that logic, when the weather brings rain – celebrate wetness!

In the same way that I am captivated by snow and ice, I am drawn to water drops.

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How can you be expected to celebrate a cold, wet, miserable day?

Admittedly, I have not always succeeded. Not even thought of trying. Days spent waiting around on miserable railway platforms with a damp wind blowing up my skirt and down my neck, I was not enchanted.

We cannot be happy all the time. If we were, how would we recognise it?

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But when we are less than thrilled, it is often possible to improve our mood simply by adjusting our attitude to whatever it is that is annoying us.

Granted – some situations are beyond reprieve.

But you can generally learn from a bad experience or turn it into an amusing story.

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Who wants to sit around an airport waiting for a delayed flight?

The delay I encountered in Khartoum, oh so many years ago, was not in fact the lengthiest I ever endured, but it was by far the most uncomfortable, sitting on the filthy floor of the domestic terminal through two long nights.

There were no light refreshments and the facilities were – best avoided. It was before i pods and such distractions. Because it was a camping trip, I was not even equipped with a book, so the hours dragged and we certainly did not enjoy the experience.

To watch the clock and count the minutes would have been excruciating, but I had learned by then how to occupy my mind while killing time. In airports, it has always been people-watching and Khartoum was completely new and fascinating to me. In addition, I was with my friend Tim who can find fun in most situations.

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The trip was basically a flop right from the start, messing about waiting for a flight to Juba. Arriving there eventually, two days late, we looked around and asked ourselves why we’d thought it was such a good idea.

We pitched our tents outside the local prison where little kids came to stare at us and waited for the intense heat of the afternoon to pass. Over the next two weeks we bounced our way back to Khartoum, hot, dirty, tired, insect-bitten and constantly anxious that we might miss our flights home.

Yet it was the experience that taught me the most about myself.

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It is easy to look back at unpleasant situations and see what you may have gained from them even though, at the time, you may have believed it impossible to ever be more miserable.

Perhaps what got me through one or two such experiences was the certain knowledge that I would survive and that there were many who would happily change places with me as they most definitely suffered more and perpetually. In the depth of despair, I would have said that the thought of other people’s suffering made me feel worse, but in retrospect I believe it was what prevented me from giving in to anguish.

The severe pain following a spinal fusion and the morphine-induced nightmare which accompanied it were exceedingly tiresome, but they were temporary. There was (hopefully) a light at the end of the tunnel for me. Many people have very little hope and since I had no way of helping them, the very least I could do was tolerate my own comparatively minor problems with grace.

One hasn’t much choice but to tolerate and I’m not sure how much grace I’ve mustered. I seriously doubt I was ever in the running for a patient of the year award. If (God forbid) it happens again, I really must try harder,

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All I really meant to say was that when it rains, I take pictures of raindrops.

Once I start, it’s hard to stop.

Whereas photographing ice, my fingers eventually call STOP!…

…there is no such inhibition here.

Each frame just dragging me to the next.

….and so on…

Tomorrow – the Sun may shine and hot weather is forecast soon.

I’ll try to tolerate it with grace.

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