The same shower can disappoint a picnic and relieve a worried gardener.

Weather has no opinion about your plans. The same hour of rain ruins an afternoon somebody arranged weeks ago and saves a garden somebody has been watching anxiously, and neither person is wrong about what it meant. Most events are like this: neutral in themselves, and given their character by what each person needed from the day. Forgetting that turns another person’s relief into a small insult.

When something goes against you, try naming who it might be helping. That is not a way of talking yourself into cheerfulness; it just keeps the disappointment from hardening into a belief that the world was aimed at you.