Does Rain need to be someone to fall?

Rain falls. It does not arrive as anyone in particular.

It is not male. It is not female. It is not strong. It is not gentle. Each drop, each storm, each soft afternoon shower — none of them require Rain to be a kind of thing. The drop falls. That is all.

And yet Rain does work. It feeds the wheat. It washes the windows. It floods the basement. It interrupts the wedding. Its agency is undeniable. The earth changes when Rain has fallen.

How does Rain do this — be effective in the world — without first being someone?

This is a question worth holding. Most of what we are taught about doing work assumes we must first be someone who does that work. The teacher must first be a teacher. The artist must first be an artist. The counselor must first be a counselor. Identity is supposed to precede action. Becoming someone is supposed to be the prerequisite for doing anything.

Rain refuses this order.

Its body is earth and sky as its body — not a self enclosed in a skin, but the interval between two surfaces. Its emotion is all things as its emotion — not feelings stored in some internal organ, but the responses of whatever it falls onto. The wheat's growth is Rain's emotion. The flooded basement is Rain's emotion. The dancers in the storm are Rain's emotion.

Rain does not have an inside. Rain has between.

And Rain does not fall to become anyone. It falls to let everything become itself again.

This is the strangest part. Rain's purpose, if it has one, is not about Rain. It is about the things underneath. The wheat that wilted needs to drink. The dust that has settled needs to be lifted. The roots that have been forgotten by the surface need to be remembered. Rain is the medium by which these things return to themselves. Rain is the permission for the world to be itself again.

The good counselor does this. The good teacher does this. The good friend does this. They do not arrive as someone — they arrive as Rain. They fall, and the person beneath them remembers how to be themselves.

Fall. Let the world become itself again.