"I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way"
About this Quote
The phrasing is plainspoken and insistently visual, like someone opening a curtain and refusing to be dragged back into the dark. “Clearly” and “gone” do the heavy lifting, compressing a whole narrative of endurance into two blunt, satisfying clicks. Then “all obstacles” flips the usual pop promise. Most songs offer escape; Nash offers orientation. It’s resilience without the macho posturing - the courage of being unsentimental about what’s ahead.
Context matters here: “I Can See Clearly Now” arrives in the early 1970s, when pop and soul were increasingly comfortable making private feeling sound like public weather. Nash, working in a reggae-leaning idiom that moves forward with steady patience, pairs the lyric with a buoyant groove that refuses to dramatize pain. The music smiles while the words do something tougher: they normalize the idea that healing is less about forgetting the storm than about learning to navigate after it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Optimism |
|---|---|
| Source | Song 'I Can See Clearly Now' (1972), written and recorded by Johnny Nash; opening lines: 'I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way.' |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Nash, Johnny. (2026, January 15). I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-can-see-clearly-now-the-rain-is-gone-i-can-see-167839/
Chicago Style
Nash, Johnny. "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-can-see-clearly-now-the-rain-is-gone-i-can-see-167839/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-can-see-clearly-now-the-rain-is-gone-i-can-see-167839/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.















