"The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain"
About this Quote
The counsel is spare and disarming: when a storm arrives, stop trying to bargain with the sky. It urges a shift from control to acceptance, a recognition that some forces are indifferent to our will and pass on their own timetable. Rather than thrashing against circumstance, conserve strength for what is still yours to shape how to wait, how to shelter, how to learn. Acceptance here is not defeat. It is clarity about the boundary between what can be changed and what must be endured.
Longfellow returned often to weather as a moral landscape. Writing from New England, where a sudden squall can swallow the sun and depart just as quickly, he treated storms as metaphors for grief, illness, disappointment, the ordinary tempests of a human life. His poetry balances sentiment with steadiness; the rain is dark and dreary, yet behind the clouds the sun persists. Letting it rain becomes a discipline of patience and proportion. You do not deny the downpour or pretend it is pleasant; you let it be real, and you let it pass.
There is a Stoic cadence in the advice, though softened by Longfellow’s gentler voice. He does not call for hardening the heart but for easing its clench. The energy spent resenting rain is better spent tending to the present moment the sound on the roof, the book by the lamp, the conversation that grows in a house drawn inward. Resistance multiplies misery. Acceptance makes space for small mercies.
The line also reflects a poet who knew private sorrow and did not mistake pain for personal failure. Storms are part of the climate of living. Letting them come and go teaches rhythmic trust: the ground will drink, the air will clear, and when the sun returns, you will be there to feel it.
Longfellow returned often to weather as a moral landscape. Writing from New England, where a sudden squall can swallow the sun and depart just as quickly, he treated storms as metaphors for grief, illness, disappointment, the ordinary tempests of a human life. His poetry balances sentiment with steadiness; the rain is dark and dreary, yet behind the clouds the sun persists. Letting it rain becomes a discipline of patience and proportion. You do not deny the downpour or pretend it is pleasant; you let it be real, and you let it pass.
There is a Stoic cadence in the advice, though softened by Longfellow’s gentler voice. He does not call for hardening the heart but for easing its clench. The energy spent resenting rain is better spent tending to the present moment the sound on the roof, the book by the lamp, the conversation that grows in a house drawn inward. Resistance multiplies misery. Acceptance makes space for small mercies.
The line also reflects a poet who knew private sorrow and did not mistake pain for personal failure. Storms are part of the climate of living. Letting them come and go teaches rhythmic trust: the ground will drink, the air will clear, and when the sun returns, you will be there to feel it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Letting Go |
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