After the rain

The dampness and cold make us appreciate sunny days, grateful to our parents for sheltering us from the rain and wind. Only when we truly understand the prolonged, dreary dampness do we appreciate and rejoice in warm, sunny days. As the writer Nguyen Tuan metaphorically put it: "It's as joyful as seeing the bright sunshine after a long period of rain, as joyful as reconnecting with a broken dream."

It is a heartfelt emotion that arises in the cool breeze, in the delicate clouds and sunlight weaving a clear sky. After the rain, along with the earth and sky, all things are warmed and refreshed, and any dark clouds of sadness and gloom in the soul seem to gradually dissipate.

In the highlands, where rain blankets the landscape for months on end, the signals that the rain will stop are never readily available. They test patience with the gloom of the days, with cold, wet, and melancholic – a unique combination of feelings.

Perhaps that is why, in "The Life of a Tomb Statue" (an essay by Chu Van Son), the impressions of the forest rain are depicted so uniquely from a soul sensitive to beauty and sadness: "The afternoon rain made the statue's face heavy and swollen. Water from the two deep eye sockets gushed out onto the gnarled cheeks, overflowing onto the hands covering the face, and then continued to drip like stalactites in a dark cave, falling onto the thin knees whose wooden flesh had long since turned dark and rotten."

It's a poignant feeling of touching the endless rain, of absorbing the melancholy and sadness of the Central Highlands' rainy season to the very core. Therefore, amidst the endless rain, the moment of blue skies, white clouds, and golden sunshine after the rain is truly precious.

I vividly remember the summers of my childhood, after the long, persistent rains, when the sky returned to its bright, sunny state. Lying on my side by the veranda, watching the clouds drift gently across the sky like someone pulling back a white tulle curtain to dry it, I felt all the confinement and sadness in my heart being washed away. I suddenly thought to myself how subtle and logical the poet Xuan Dieu was when he argued: "Spring in the middle of winter when the sun peeks through / in the middle of summer when the sky is blue after the rain / in the middle of autumn when the bright wind blows gently."

We can't deny a psychological rule: when you're sad, rain makes you even sadder. However, the truth is that the source of human sadness is often not the rain. Therefore, in the rain, in the midst of loneliness and sorrow, we have no choice but to confront ourselves. After a storm, does the human soul mature in the same way? I remember in high school, we girls always wished for heavy rain and strong winds so we could be excused from wearing our school uniforms and not be hindered. Little did we know that those small, thoughtless wishes, for our compatriots in Central Vietnam living with storms and floods, were a heavy burden of food, clothing, and even lives.

Back then and now, sometimes when I recall that time, I feel a lingering connection between myself and the rain. I remember one time, in the middle of a torrential downpour, sitting on a gloomy bus, I was startled to see raindrops splashing against the lowered window and heard the driver's voice shouting out to the street like a broken command: "Watch out, the girl might fall off her bike!"

Outside, the rain poured down, and the child sitting behind his father was dozing off, his head tilted back… At that moment, something suddenly broke within me, not because of the shouting, not necessarily because of the splashing rain, but because it transcended the sadness that enveloped my soul. Suffering and human kindness, in the rain, became real and close, making trivial joys and sorrows seem distant. An awakening between warmth and cold, dryness and wetness, happiness and uncertainty, poverty and abundance, compelled me to reflect more deeply on the inherent symmetry and imperfection of life.

I used to think about the rain, waiting for it, hoping the rainy season would pass quickly. Sometimes I felt restless and anxious, other times restless and yearning. The rain showers that pass through life, the "sudden downpours following the monsoon," aren't always pleasant... But life, like everything else, will be reborn after the rain, gently and intensely. And I've come to realize that, like life itself, rain also needs to be reborn.

Source: https://baogialai.com.vn/sau-con-mua-post329937.html