“It’s raining cats and dogs …”

“Rain, rain, rain, go away …”

That is what went through my head as I watched sheets of water pouring off my roof. Out my window, I saw the yard turning into a pond and the driveway becoming a river.

Ten minutes ago, the sun was shining and now the morning was soggy and gray. For the past three days, the weather turned from sun to showers in the blink of an eye.

“It’s raining, it’s pouring. The old man is snoring …”

“Singing in the rain. I’m singing in the rain …”

More rainy day phrases popped into my head as the downpour got heavier. I hoped everything would get a chance to dry out, but that wasn’t happening today.

In the midst of watching the rain, my phone rang. It was my friend, Marsha, who lives maybe 10 miles or less from me as the crow flies. We talked for a minute and then I asked her how hard it was raining at her house.

“It’s not,” she said. “The sun is shining.”

“You are kidding,” I said. “It’s raining like crazy here.”

She said it hadn’t rained at her place in a day or so and she needed to water her garden if it didn‘t rain soon.

“I wish I could park a few clouds over your yard instead of mine,” I said.

We talked a bit more and then the topic changed from the weather to Marsha telling me she watched a fascinating program about the brain. She said it was about perception and about how we see things from our own unique perspective.

Then right in the middle of that conversation, we both had what Oprah calls an “Ahaa moment.”

“It’s like this day,” I said. “I tell you it’s a rainy one and you tell me no it’s not, it’s sunny.”

“Yes,” she said, the ahaa hitting her, too. “We could argue about who is right, but truth is we are both right.”

The world at my house was indeed sloppy and wet, but not that far away, her world was bright and dry. We both saw the day from our perspective, from what we happened to be experiencing at the moment.

“Yes, if we were silly and didn’t understand that it is possible for us both to be right although our experience is different, we could get into an argument — maybe even a fight,” I said, laughing. “Wonder how many battles the world fights over differences in perception?”

What if I made up my mind that I had to convince my friend the sky was overcast and pouring rain? Now no matter how much she told me that she was sure the sun was shining, I refused to consider the possibility that her experience might be different from mine. I decided I was right, period, and I would not consider that we might both be both right.

Marsha laughed and agreed we probably have many conflicts that aren’t a matter of right or wrong but simply a case of seeing the same thing differently — not being open to the possibility that one person’s rainy day might be another’s sunny one.

We concluded that it’s a good idea to keep an open mind and remember that rain or shine everyone sees life from a different place.

Just as I hung up the phone, the sun reappeared and the raindrops hanging from the leaves sparkled in the light.

“Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven…”

I laughed as I thought of those lyrics and hoped that over at Marsha’s house some of those rainy pennies were finally falling from heaven and onto her garden.