I stumbled across a late ’80s pop hit the other day that I thought was pretty apt for the current weather and my prevailing mood. It’s called Blame it on the Rain by Milli Vanilli. The song’s catchy, slick, and light-hearted melody is a perfect contrast to its otherwise depressing theme, allowing you to dance and wallow in self-pity at the same time
Blame it on the rain that was falling, falling
Blame it on the stars that did shine at night
Whatever you do don’t put the blame on you
Blame it on the rain yeah yeah
I used to love rain. When I was a kid, I liked listening to it pitter-patter on the roof and windows and breathing in the distinctive scent it produced on dry earth. Many times, I would get lost in thought just looking out into the distance and watch the falling teardrops blanket the horizon. During my teenage years, I developed a more romantic attachment to cloudbursts, influenced no doubt by the realization that girls were actually pretty cool (“cooler than the other side of my pillow”) and by songs such as Basil Valdez‘s Tuwing Umuulan at Kapiling Ka. In a scene worthy of Christopher de Leon (or I suppose John Lloyd Cruz in today’s milieu), I once even ran in the middle of a downpour along a major road searching from car to car for a girl whom her worried parents thought had gone missing. Even when I became a young adult and experienced for the first time driving a car along the flooded streets of España and Tondo, my love affair with rain continued. There was simply something solemn about it that appealed to my soul. But then Ondoy happened and my life-long affair with rain ended in an acrimonious break-up. That wicked storm drowned half of my house as well as both of my cars. It also trapped my family in our second floor for a whole day. I have since decided to move to higher ground, as in literally atop a mountain. But like a spurned lover, the rain continues to stalk me. While it will never flood where I’m moving to unless a giant meteor strikes Manila Bay and creates a 10,000-foot tidal wave, there is now the problem of rain-induced erosion and landslides to worry about instead. It seems that a cloud of bad luck has also been following me around and I have been in a sort of losing streak since that deluge last year. And so gone are my days of dancing and singing in the rain. Nowadays, rainy days (and not just Mondays) always get me down.
But then I got this anonymous “chain-text” (text version of the chain-letter) the other day that asked me to share the message with 10 other people. I normally would automatically delete these kinds of messages but since it was not typed in Jejemon language, I started browsing through it first. By the time I finished reading, it made me wonder if they already have cell phones in heaven. It read… “A strong person knows how to keep their life in order. Even with tears in their eyes, they still manage to say ‘I’m OK’ with a smile. Send this to a strong person. I just did. God is good. Change is coming. God saw your sadness and said hard times are over. If you believe in Him, send this to 10 people including me. Watch what happens in 30 minutes. Be honest and send this to anyone who made you smile this year. It may surprise you how many you get back.”
To the chagrin of 10 of my friends and relatives, I used up all my remaining free text and passed on the message to them. Unfortunately, nothing earth-shaking happened to me after 30 minutes. Ironically, I think it even drizzled. But it did sort of jolt me a little bit from my stupor. Yes, bad and sad things happen to people. Instead of feeling sorry for oneself, however, and blaming the rain, the stars, or even our former Madame President for all the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” we can try acceptance instead. Accept, move on, and take back control of our lives. And so, as much as I really liked Milli Vanilli’s hit song, I think it’s time to change my tune. Well, maybe not today but perhaps tomorrow. Besides, Milli Vanilli was a fake. In what was (and still is) the mother of all lip-synching scandals, it was discovered later on that they did not really sing any of their hits. They only fronted for another group that actually recorded the songs for them. The disgraced duo was stripped of their Grammy and quickly disappeared from the music scene. They only had themselves to blame.
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