I have always been an individual optimist.  When I was is psychology graduate school, I read in one of my textbooks a phrase which has carried me through many trials and tribulations in life.  A famous psychologist said:

When things look bad, and getting worse, “The world will not come to an end if…” should be your watchword.

No matter how tough life seems, the world will not come to an end.  The Sun will come up tomorrow morning, just like it did this morning.  Even if the sky is totally overcast, or it is snowing or raining, you always know the sun has come up every day, and it will come up again tomorrow.  As long as you are alive, you will make it through this time of tribulation, and come out stronger on the other side.

I live in a part of the United States that has more than its share of cloudy days.  But the sun is always right there, trying to break through.

This photo, taken from the bow of a Washington State Ferry, shows the clouds over the Kitsap Peninsula across Puget Sound.  They look ominous, don’t they? And you can see that the Peninsula is getting rained-on.  But you can also see that the sun is still there, just casting its light a little farther south.

I call this photo “a lid over the world”.  Even though the dark clouds virtually cover the sky, there’s a gap, through which you can see the sunlit white peak of Mount Baker. I drove a few miles to capture this photo with a minimum of power lines in the view.  I found it on the roof of the parking garage of the Everett Clinic, where I go to see a specialist.

All you pro photographers out there, how often have you missed a gorgeous photo, for want of a vantage point from where to take your picture?  That happens to me quite often, and it is frustrating to know that you can’t just stop at the edge of the freeway to take a great photo of the mountains along the eastern horizon!

I always love this type of cloud, which act as a perfect screen when you are outdoors, letting through enough sunlight for you to see where you are going (this was on a golf course not for from our home), while preventing glare.  And the pattern they make is beautiful in itself.

Sometimes, you just have to go above the clouds to find the sunlight.  The marvel of air travel, where you can see the clouds from the other side, allows us to see the manifestation of the sun, when it is obscured below.

On our cruise to Hawaii in 2018, we had many days on the open Pacific Ocean, where the only sights were the sky, and the seemingly-endless water.  So we watch with delight whenever the sun made its appearance.

I got a kick out of this one, where the sun looks like it tore a hole in the clouds so we could see the blue sky above.

This is at sunset, with the sun making its goodbye, waving at us from behind the clouds.

Finally, from widely different parts of the country, similar cloud formations in different weather.

This is from close to the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado.  The sun is there, but hiding.

This is the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, after a violent thunderstorm.  Yes, the sun will come up tomorrow, and it will come out after every thunderstorm.

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