This is our third day of gloom. What do people in the Northwest do during their long cloudy season?
Part of feeling gloomy must be located in our DNA. Some primal urge to keep migrating until you find a place with more sunshine.
However, wisdom suggests that we make do.
Actually, wisdom suggests that we do more than make do, we make peace with where we are. Maybe even make whoopi with where we are. You know, if you can't be with the one you love . . .
In these mountains we're often not just under a cloud but in a cloud. This morning is one of those in the cloud days. It's more accurate to think not of a low ceiling but of a cloud floor.
So...feeling gloomy, I looked up the word. I especially like to see where words come from, what language, what people coined the words we use to describe our experience of life.
Gloomy means 'dark or poorly lit' and/or 'causing or feeling depression or despondency.'
But, and this is rarely the case, the experts don't know where the word comes from. I had guessed that maybe it was related to 'gloaming' -- which is an old word for dusk or twilight. But apparently not.
So...not only am I feeling gloomy but I will never know where the word comes from. Great start to the day.
But, Wisdom suggests . . .
So, I'm listening to rain on the tin roof. Nice sound. Noticing that the lights on the roof of Walmart glow in a lovely spread out kind of way when it's this damn gloomy.
Noticing how useless it is to be wishing the weather would change.
I guess what I'm really wishing is that my own interior weather would change. And remembering that just a few weeks ago when it was so dry and our forest floors were full of dry leaves and fire danger I was wishing for rain. This makes me laugh. Laughing is a hard environment for gloom to survive in.
Not quite making whoopi yet, but it's a nudge in the right direction.
