Can You Stand The Rain?
One of New Edition’s biggest hits, “Can You Stand The Rain?” was the song that made me fall in love with RnB. I vividly remember sitting in the passenger seat of my older brother’s beat up ass red Toyota SR5, driving to Girard College for an amateur wrestling match. It was in that car where he popped in his recorded cassette tape that had a bunch of slow jams on it. I remember it was night time and it was raining outside and coincidentally the first song that came on from the tape started like, “On a perfect day, I know that I can count on you”… Johnny Gill’s voice on that opening verse ripped me away from the conversation I was having with my brother and Ralph Tresvant’s high pitched “cuz I need somebody, who will stand by me”… held my attention until the final verse closed out. That was when I knew I loved RnB.
Sunny days, everyone loves them. Everything seems to fit on a sunny day. Your skin glows, your smile is bright, your clothes fit better when it’s sunny. You step with a little more swag when the sun is shining on you. A sunny day can have you feeling like the man strolling down the street with your shades on. When it’s sunny out all of your friends hit you up like “yeooooooo what we doing?!”. We live for sunny days. What happens when that sun fails to shine through the clouds? What happens when those clouds turn dark? What about when rain falls from those clouds? How about when the sky flashes with lightning and the ground trembles with thunder?
Life is a series of sunny days and rainy days and one of the most important questions that you can ask yourself or your loved ones is “Can you stand the rain?” When I’m down can I count on you to uplift me? When I’m sad can you help me find happiness? When I’m broke can I borrow a dollar?! When I’m hungry, can I get a plate?! Because you know what when everything is good and you don’t need a damn thing, everyone wants to be around you and everyone wants to be your friend. You can count on everyone on a perfect day, but that isn’t when you need them. You need somebody who will stand by you through the good times and bad times.Love unconditional is what we all want. That’s that love that transcends the weather and can be found through the clouds, the rain, the lightning, and the thunder. Truth be told, unconditional love can dictate the weather. Unconditional love can guide you out of the darkness.
The question “Can you stand the rain?”, is not just something you should be asking someone else. Most importantly you need to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, “Can I stand the rain?”. Truth be told, don’t nobody got you like you got yourself, and you can’t will yourself through the rainy days then it will consume you. People try to seek unconditional love from other people when in reality we need to love ourselves unconditionally. “Love unconditional, I’m not asking just of you”. That is the single most overlooked line in that entire song. It took me years to truly appreciate that line for how powerful it is. Before you ask someone else to love you unconditionally you need to ask yourself, “Do I love myself unconditionally?”, because that will ultimately answer the question, “Can I stand the rain?”.
So many people spend their whole lives, strolling down that rainy sidewalk waiting for someone else to come hold an umbrella over their head. Meanwhile, they fail to realise that they have the power to create their own umbrella and stop the rain from hitting them. Imagine this, you walking down the street and it’s raining cats and dogs outside and you have your bomb-ass old man umbrella and someone asks you to come hold it over their head. The first thing that you are going to say is “hell naw get your own, I ain’t getting wet for you.”, or if you are one of those kind souls you’ll let them use your umbrella until they can get their own but if they can’t you eventually have to go. Love is the umbrella that can hold off that rain until the clouds dissipate and the sun shines through. Without your OWN umbrella, you won’t make it through the storm.
You have to realize that an umbrella is made up of two key components so you need to make sure you have them all to have an umbrella that is strong enough to withstand the gusts and the heavy rain. The canopy is arguably the most important part of the umbrella and it is what blocks all the rain from coming down on you. The rain is your troubles, everything that can cause you to be sad. Maybe these troubles were self-inflicted or brought on by another person. They may be your own mistakes or the things that someone else has done to you. The canopy is capable of catching it all and letting it slide off harmlessly to your side. Your ability to forgive yourself and let go of negativity make up the canopy. Forgive yourself for your mistakes and understand that they do not define you, instead they contribute to you and use them to become better.
The second essential part of the umbrella is the handle. That is what you hold on for dear life when the wind is acting a fool trying to turn it inside out. That is what you use to angle the canopy to catch that annoying ass sideways rain that you never understood until you were an adult and realised that the wind affects things. The handle is your resilience, it is strong and it is sturdy, the same way your level of resilience should be. Resiliency is the ability to bounce back from adversity and that rain is all of the obstacles and crashes you’ve had in life. Coming back from setbacks make you stronger and make you capable of withstanding stronger winds.
Unconditional love is patient, it is resilient, and it is forgiving. The unconditional love of self is what shields you from the rain and helps you make it to see the sun. You know damn well that everyone loves those sunny days but everyone can’t stand the rain. Everyone doesn’t have their own umbrella and you can’t go around borrowing someone else’s. You need to build your own strong and reliable umbrella so that you can find someone else with their own that you can hold hands with while walking side by side and holding your umbrellas together because, above all else, unconditional love is not selfish.
How do you make it through the rainy days? Who do you have in your life that can stand the rain with you? Have you ever had your life flooded by the rain and been close to drowning? Share your thoughts below and let me know if you have a different interpretation of “Can You Stand The Rain”, by New Edition.