how to enjoy a rainy beach day

There’s a storm a-comin! Are you packing up your beach gear or staying put?

What do you do when it rains on your beach day?

That’s not an unusual event in Costa Rica’s Southern Pacific, where we get 284 inches of rain per year (by comparison, Atlanta gets 47 inches). Even in the dry season, I’ve encountered multiple rainy days in a row.

Most people flee the beach as soon as it starts raining. Pouring rain would ruin anyone’s beach day. Right?

…Well, not necessarily. The thing about most weather (minus tornados & hurricanes & the like, which are uncommon in Costa Rica) is that it’s all a matter of perspective. Weather only ruins your beach day if you decide the weather is too bad to have a beach day.

The day we finally decided to hike out to the whale’s tail beach at Parque Nacional Marino Ballena, this was the weather we were handed. And it was the dry season, too!

This is what JP and I call the “Bad Weather Philosophy”: Weather is only bad if you think it is. Allow me to explain.

If you head to the beach with the attitude that you’ll only enjoy your day if it’s bright and sunny, you’re guaranteed a disappointment if it rains. In that case, whether your beach day is a success hinges on a factor that’s entirely outside of your control. Your relative happiness is left up to chance.

But if you head to the beach with the attitude that you’ll enjoy your day no matter what, then no matter what, you won’t be disappointed. Sure, it might rain; but then you get the beach all to yourself and can splash around in puddles like a little kid. You can’t control the weather, but you can control your response to the weather. Now your relative happiness is back in your own hands and you’re no longer at the mercy of external circumstances.

Rainy days make for beautiful empty beaches

The Bad Weather Philosophy applies to more than just bad weather. For example, I bring it with me every time we go on a whale-watching tour. You see, I flippity fucken love whales. Everybody who knows me knows how much I flippity fucken love whales. But it took me multiple whale-watching attempts over several years to finally see a motherfucken whale. At least twice, I’ve returned from an unsuccessful whale-watching tour and sobbed with disappointment. All that money, all that time, all those high hopes, and all for nothing.

Since adopting the Bad Weather Philosophy, I’m a “failed whale-watching trip” pro. Now I never get in a boat expecting anything other than a nice day out on the ocean. I don’t let myself hope for whales, I don’t tie my happiness to an unpredictable wildlife sighting that’s out of my control. I’m just happy to be out on the water, and if a whale shows up, well, all the better!

“idgaf if it’s raining.” —This humpback whale, probably.

Bugs are another good example. Like most people, I don’t really like bugs. The ever-present ants in Costa Rica are my arch-nemeses. I used to scream and scurry away at the sight of a spider or a cockroach. Bugs were one of the reasons I’d never been camping.

After we adopted Lot 13, I realized I only had two options: Be afraid of bugs and never go camping on our land; or get over it and go camping. It didn’t happen immediately, but over time, I trained myself to be more tolerant of creepy-crawlies. If I saw a spider, I’d pause to look at it and think about all the mosquitos it’s eating. I stopped putting effort into battling outdoor ants and got used to the idea that sometimes in the rainforest, ants will crawl on me. Unless your dislike of bugs reaches clinical phobia levels, you can make that mindset shift, too.

“Isn’t that just toxic positivity?” you might wonder.

No, it’s not! I’m not saying never be upset, never feel difficult feelings. There are a whole lot of legitimately upsetting things in the world. I’m saying it’s not worth your emotional energy to be upset about the things you don’t need to be upset about. If it rains on your beach day, save your upset feelings for fighting climate change. If your whale-watching trip is a bust, transfer your disappointment to the loss of women’s reproductive freedom. If you see a bug, reserve your disgust for the Republican Party. Don’t spend your precious emotional energy on the harmless day-to-day things that are out of your control.

Mindblowingly gorgeous bad weather over Ojochal

The Bad Weather Philosophy is more like the Buddhist metaphor that there are “two arrows” of pain. The first arrow is the pain itself. The second arrow is the story we tell ourselves about the pain. There’s nothing we can do about the first arrow; some things just hurt. But we don’t need to compound that pain by shooting ourselves with the second arrow. We’re in control of that arrow. We can accept the pain, the disappointment, the upset, the heartbreak, without dwelling in it. We can say “that’s a gross bug” without adding “I don’t like gross bugs.”

And after the rain, you get rainbows.

Once you spot the second arrow, you realize how often you’ve been shooting yourself with it. Instead, practice shifting your mindset to avoid that second wound. Give it a try. You might be surprised how much you enjoy your beach day in the rain.

Pura vida,

-Chaplain Emily

Soaking wet from the rain and making beach art at Playa Hermosa