3: Silver Linings

“Waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought: useless and disappointing.”

- A Cinderella Story (2004)

Like the infrastructure of Los Angeles—I was not designed for rain.

Spending four years at the mercy of “the lake effect” in one of the snowiest cities in the United States can make the promise of southern California’s year-round sunny weather incredibly appealing for someone like me. When I moved back, my choice seemed like a safe bet. Now that I’ve been here for a minute, however, I can’t help but notice how often my car has to moonlight as an Olympic swimmer just to survive a short drive to the grocery store.

Has it been raining like this often while I was away? If so, I really feel like someone should have mentioned it to me sooner. I miss when being Californian meant having the freedom to forget where I last put my umbrella. I also miss when every weather-related notification on my phone didn’t remind me of Evan Almighty (2007). I half expect to find Steve Carell building an ark whenever I look out the window.

As a kid, I also used to think the frequency adults talked about the weather was some sort of elaborate inside joke. I was wrong. Every other conversation I’ve had lately has included commentary on the rain: How was the rain in your area yesterday? Hope it doesn’t rain tonight. Looks like we’ll have a bit of a break from all the rain this weekend. Et cetera. And then, inevitably, someone will mention The Drought.

You can hear the capitalization.

As another rainstorm hits California for what feels like the umpteenth time this year, the only silver lining people seem to be able to offer themselves and each other is that, hey, well, at least we know the state can certainly use the rain (and in case anyone’s interested, here’s a short New York Times article about just how true that sentiment might be.) Personally, I’m brave enough to admit the truth can contain multitudes: I’m glad California’s getting some water, I’m sad so many people are suffering from bad weather and poorly designed street drainage, and I’m personally inconvenienced by the symptoms of my vitamin D deficiency.

However, one silver lining for me is that all the recent rain and all the conversations I’ve been participating in about The Drought have reminded me of an iconic line from the classically cheesy romcom A Cinderella Story (2004), starring Hilary Duff, Chad Michael Murray, Jennifer Coolidge, and Regina King. As a result, I recently rewatched the movie, and now I have a few things to say about Cinderella stories in general.

In this pivotal scene of A Cinderella Story, Hilary Duff courageously storms into what has to be America’s largest high school locker room to yell at a forlorn-looking Chad Michael Murray. Duff’s character, not-like-the-other-girls Sam, confronts Murray’s character, popular-quarterback-slash-aspiring-poet Austin, after he basically hangs her out to dry when her secret identity as his pen pal Cinderella is humiliatingly revealed in front of the entire school. Honestly, the details of this scene aren’t that important. All you really need to know is that Sam looks Austin right in the eye before his Big Game and loudly declares that she’s over him, stating, “Waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought: useless and disappointing.”

Ouch.

The scene ends, the movie goes on, and predictably, Sam does get her guy. Barely a few minutes after Sam’s speech, we watch as Austin rudely abandons all his athletic responsibilities and teammates (whom I’m assuming worked very hard all season practicing for this game, by the way) to run up to Sam in the stands. The music swells, they share a kiss, and then—hilariously—the camera dramatically zooms in on a CGI raindrop falling from the sky that lands right on Austin’s cheek. It begins to pour.

That’s right. True Love’s Kiss can end The Drought. Call a scientist today and let them know you finally figured it out.

So, why does any of this matter? Well, at its core, Sam’s story is simply a story about navigating the experience of wanting. Our heroine spends her entire movie wanting someone or something—wanting her dad back, wanting Princeton, wanting Austin, wanting a well-deserved break from work and school and life, wanting respect from her peers, wanting belonging, and even just wanting to survive the spectacle that is Jennifer Coolidge’s magnificent performance as an evil stepmother.

It’s worth understanding Sam’s story as a story about wanting because she really is a Cinderella story, and the Cinderella story has impacted many of us since childhood, regardless of how actively aware we might be of its influence. When we recognize Sam’s story as a story about wanting, we also recognize how Cinderella in general is really just an embodiment of wanting at its finest. For example, there’s a reason Disney’s Cinderella sang that a dream is a wish your heart makes as early as 1950. Even under different names, the archetype has endured and thrived in so many languages and across so many histories because, at its purest form, it is a love letter to wish fulfillment.

Plus, it’s especially fun to root for Cinderella because her story always makes it so clear that she deserves to have everything she wants. She is kind and hardworking and conventionally pretty and, for all her goodwill, all she gets for most of her story is grief, abuse, and exploitation. I mean, she is named after “cinder,” for crying out loud. By the time Cinderella gets her prince, you start to think her moving out of the attic and into a castle is more than a fairytale ending—it’s borderline an act of justice.

So when Sam says, “Waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought: useless and disappointing,” she arguably says something interesting about the Cinderella experience as a whole. And beyond being silly and fun and camp, this one line from A Cinderella Story indirectly points out the following truth:

There is a big difference between “wanting” and “waiting.”

By the end of the movie, Sam gets almost everything she wants, and she is indisputably happier than she has been for the majority of her story. Because of how quickly her luck changes for the better after she declares she is done waiting, the film’s resolution initially appears to make Sam’s powerful one-liner seem unnecessary. You might be tempted to conclude that maybe, like Sam, if you want someone or something badly enough to keep waiting for it, one day you will get what you want and you will finally be happy.

Let me be very clear: I’m not saying this conclusion isn’t true. I’m just saying it’s incomplete.

Wanting is not waiting. Like squares and rectangles, they are related but distinct experiences, and as such, they can yield related but distinct consequences. Sam wasn’t wrong to want more than what she had, and it’s clear even as she tells Austin she’s moving on that she does indeed still want him. Yet no matter how her movie ends, Sam was also right when she acknowledged that the active, lived experience of waiting for someone or something to happen is often going to be, quote, “useless and disappointing.”

In its purest form, waiting is a passive experience. And while there is a time and place for waiting, it seems needlessly grueling and punishing and helpless to routinely position yourself as a person with no control over your various circumstances. Conflating wanting with waiting runs the risk of condemning yourself to feeling guilty, weary, or stupid when you might be doing something as simple as just wanting or wishing something was true. I mean, obviously, it depends on what exactly it is you are wishing for, but for the most part, don’t you think that all sounds a bit unfair? Like Cinderella, you deserve to want, and you deserve the right to root for yourself.

More importantly, recognizing a difference between “wanting” and “waiting” allows you to realize that it’s more than okay to want better as long as you balance it with learning to better want the things you already have.

In Sam’s case, she’s so busy wanting to escape her stepmother and to get the guy, she spends most of the movie taking her caring godmother and her best friend for granted, honestly. The movie never directly acknowledges this and her loved ones never really complain, but while I was watching Sam navigate her life, I realized our heroine would have been happier for much more of her story if she just enjoyed and appreciated what she already had with more intentionality.

Learn how to want what you already have, and you won’t spend so much of your time always waiting for something else to arrive. Like Cinderella, your story will always have some version of evil stepmothers, ugly stepsisters, midnight deadlines, undependable shoes, and Prince Charmings who take their sweet time to figure themselves out. That’s true. But I promise—your story will also feature joy, silly opportunities to dress up and dance, and people like fairy godmothers and determined friends who happily look out for you.

Also, life is long! There will be so many things you will want and wish for that you will get and achieve as your own Cinderella story unfolds. I know popular wisdom says to be careful for what you wish for since you might not like it after you get it. But that’s a bit of a regretful approach to take, don’t you think? I think it would be nice if we all learned a secondary lesson as well: Maybe you’ll be happier if you recognize you can still want your wish even after it comes true.

You already have things worth wanting in your life. Try to keep that in the back of your mind as you continue to wish for and work toward all your newer and more exciting dreams. And if you really take a second to sit still with that, you might find that what you already have can be more than enough.

Right now, while I write this, it is very early in the morning, and it is raining very hard outside. It was raining all last night and it will probably continue to rain for the rest of the day. I think about all the people I love who will probably be driving around later and I pray they will all stay as safe as they can on the road. I worry about my newer plants outside because they have definitely been getting overwatered lately, if not uprooted altogether. I feel cold and I’m annoyed about it. And I know that I will, once again, be unable to go on my routine little walk this afternoon.

In short, I very much still want it to stop raining—but like Sam in A Cinderella Story, I’ll try not to waste my time waiting for that to happen.

Instead, I will listen to a lot of good music. I will brew cup after cup of coffee in my favorite mug. I will hunt down my vitamin D supplements, and I might even remember to take them. I will finally text some of my friends back, and I will call my parents to check-in on how they are doing. I will make a grilled cheese for lunch and I will enjoy it immensely. I will hold hands with someone I love while I make them laugh. I will doodle, do a load of laundry, and probably discuss The Drought. I will read something interesting. I might even make time to watch another cheesy, rainy day movie.

And for now, I will let the abundance of all of that be enough for me.

Have a great day.