Some People Feel the Rain

photo © Konstantin Yuganov | Fotolia

“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.” – Bob Marley

Bob Marley (1945 – 1981) was an internationally acclaimed Jamaican reggae singer, musician, and songwriter. He was originally in the band The Wailers but went on solo when it disbanded in 1947. His album Exodus in 1977 gained him the reputation as one of the world’s best-selling artists of all time.

In this quote, Bob Marley seems to be promoting mindfulness instead of passivity to pain. But isn’t mindfulness about being passive to pain? That’s actually a big misconception that reduces meditation into a cop-out. Rick Hanson, neuropsychologist and author of “Buddha’s Brain” says that it is incredibly rare to find mindful people disengaging from the world. Actually, as we tune more into ourselves, we become more able to tune into other people.

Too see if mindfulness really makes a difference to people’s attitude, a study led by Paul Condon of Northeastern University tested their participants tendency to help someone in need following an eight-week meditation course. The results showed that participants who’d attended meditation, offered their seats five times more than those who hadn’t.

Mindfulness does not only increase empathy but also one’s ability to cope better with strong emotions like fear, sadness, and anger. So, it’s not that mindful people ignore these things; they simply cope better than most people. Instead of complaining about getting wet, they “feel the rain” by digging deeper into their problems or emotions until a solution emerges, either to accept the circumstance or to change it.