He stood at the window and watched the rain.

It was an ordinary, gray city rain. It drummed on the windowsill, slid down the glass in crooked threads, gathered in puddles on the asphalt. People outside hurried along, hid under umbrellas, hunched against the cold.

And he stood there and envied the rain.

He did not envy its freshness or its coolness. He envied its nature.

The rain did not remember that yesterday it had been sun, risen as vapor from a puddle. It did not plan to become part of a river tomorrow. It had no past to torment it and no future to agitate it. It lived inside one absolute moment-the moment of falling.

The rain never asked about the meaning of its existence. It did not try to become a better rain than it had been yesterday. It did not compare itself to others. It did not suffer from being merely rain and not an ocean. It simply fell, obeying the single honest law-the law of gravity.

The rain did not try to impress anyone. It did not care whether people cursed it or rejoiced in it. It did not look for approval. It did not fear judgment. It had no ego to defend and no image to uphold.

It was absolutely, totally free. Free from memory, from purpose, from meaning, from itself. Its being equaled its action. It was what it did.

The man stepped away from the window and sighed.

He needed to make a call, write three emails, draw up a plan for tomorrow, and remember the meeting from last week that had gone badly. He needed to be someone.

And the rain outside simply was.

And that was the whole difference in the universe.