Standing in Someone Else’s Rain!

Day 2

We often hear the phrase -walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. It’s a noble sentiment, but let’s be honest—shoes are dry, structured and manageable. Try instead standing in their rain. Not the soft cinematic kind with violin music in the background, but the messy, unexpected kind—the one that ruins your plans, soaks your socks and fogs up your glasses. Because empathy isn’t tidy. It’s wet, unpredictable and comes uninvited—just like rain.

Ursula K. Le Guin, who understood both fiction and feeling better than most, said that true empathy is standing in someone else’s rain. It’s not about offering them shelter or solving the weather. It’s about being there when the sky turns grey over their head, even if your own sky was clear just a minute ago. It’s about staying—not with answers, but with presence.

Rain teaches this quietly, almost with a wink. It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t choose favorites. It falls with democratic grace on skyscrapers and slums, on lovers in parks and loners in alleyways. It makes no announcement, no distinction. It just shows up. And isn’t that what we long for when our inner forecast turns stormy? Someone who doesn’t ask What happened? or Are you okay? but simply walks in, drenched and says, I’m here.

Rain breaks barriers. Literally and metaphorically. It turns the line between ‘me’ and ‘not-me’ into a blur. Suddenly, your coat is part of the atmosphere. The air is no longer distant—it’s on you, in you. And in that moment, the boundary between the self and the world becomes soft. That’s when empathy sneaks in, like water under a door.

Think about what happens when you care deeply for someone. You begin to sense their weather. You know when they’re holding in thunder, when their laughter is just a light drizzle masking a storm. And the most sacred act is not rushing in to fix them with sunshine. It’s choosing to sit beside them in silence, letting the rain say what words can’t.

In a world obsessed with fixing, empathy is radical. It says: You don’t need to be fixed. You just need not to be alone. It’s in the small gestures—sharing a cup of chai on a rainy evening, noticing a shiver, letting someone cry without turning it into a scene. It’s in the pause before speaking, the refusal to judge, the willingness to be changed by someone else’s downpour.

And yes, caring has a cost. Rain doesn’t fall without consequences. Flooded streets, delayed trains, ruined hairstyles. Empathy, too, can leave you soggy and spent. But would you rather be dry and untouched, or drenched and human?

Even the earth knows how to listen. It harvests rain, stores it, grows from it. Maybe we’re meant to do the same—catch moments of care, hold them quietly, let them grow roots in us. Not every drop becomes a river. But every drop matters.

So next time someone’s carrying a cloud above their head, don’t hand them platitudes like umbrellas. Don’t tell them to look on the bright side. Instead, step under their weather. Get a little wet. Let them know-I’m not here to fix the forecast. I’m just here with you, rain and all.

Because that’s empathy. Not a heroic act, but a gentle choice.

To stay.