I just know that something good is going to happen.
—Kate Bush, “Cloudbusting”
There is a lyric in a song that has haunted me for years, but in a good way. The song, “Cloudbusting,” was recorded by the English singer/songwriter Kate Bush in 1985 on her bestselling album, Hounds of Love. For me, the song has always evoked a fragile optimism that can only surface when all cause for optimism seems to cease.
“Cloudbusting” is based on a memoir titled A Book of Dreams, by Peter Reich. I encourage you to check out the song’s official video and give a listen if you’ve never heard it. (If you watched The HandMaid’s Tale on Hulu, you might have heard the song when it was featured during Season 3.)
Here is a summary of the song’s storyline courtesy of the interwebs:
The song is about the very close relationship between psychiatrist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich and his young son, Peter, told from the point of view of the mature Peter. It describes the boy's memories of his life with Reich on their family farm … where the two spent time "cloudbusting", a rain-making process which involved using a machine designed and built by Reich – a machine called a cloudbuster – to point at the sky. The lyrics further describes the elder Reich's abrupt arrest and imprisonment, the pain of loss the young Peter felt, and his helplessness at being unable to protect his father.1
Wilhelm Reich, who was a student of Freud, was a controversial figure in his later years for some of his theories ranging from sexual energy to cancer treatment, so a bit of a shadowy fellow. But who and what the song itself is about is immaterial here. It’s the refrain that Bush keeps coming back to throughout the song that has stuck with me for 40 years now:
I just know that something good is going to happen.
I don’t know when.
But just saying it could even make it happen.
That thought, that expecting something good could bring it about, felt true to me when I first fell in love with the song in my mid-twenties. Years later, as a health writer, I would come across research about optimism and the power of positive thinking in which psychologists said that even forcing a smile and faking a good mood could bring about the real thing. Kind of an emotional placebo effect. A kind of magic anyone could perform. Just by saying it.
Expect the good, and the good will happen, or so goes the thinking. Now apply that little grip on hope to the times we’re in. Despite the Handmaid-like dystopia unfolding, there are still good things happening day in and day out—a sunrise, a neighbor’s greeting, a crossword clue solved, morning coffee hot and fresh, a child’s laugh, a 20 percent-off coupon, a favorite song coming on Pandora (or a Hulu series), even a like on Facebook—these good things can be seen, not as fleeting moments passing us by, but as answers to a simple prayer. We hope for good, and it happens.
It’s probably true that these answers occur all the time whether we ask for them or not. Good things come unbidden; there is, after all, such a thing as luck. But isn’t it somehow empowering to think these things happen to us … because of us? There is a lot of bad happening right now that is out of our control. We wonder where our heroes are. We wonder how much of the heavy lifting we will have to do ourselves in the absence of real protections as we watch the rule of law fade into the distance. In spite of it all, I just know that something good is going to happen. I don’t know when, not exactly, but I do see people out there protesting, filing lawsuits, resigning rather than perform someone else’s dirty work—every day now. So I’m going to keep saying I just know that something good is going to happen. Then when it does, my soul can be lifted by the thought that just saying it maybe made it happen.
So I’ll keep saying it: I just know that something good is going to happen. I just know it, even if I don’t know when. Give it a try yourself, and who knows? The clouds may bust open, and love rain down.
Modest Thought Department: The more people who subscribe to Magistry, the more likely I can continue devoting time and energy to it. Subscriptions are like votes; they tell me I’m on to something, and, in the words of Winston Churchill, that I should keep going. Please, if you find my writing worth sharing, please share, and if you find subscribing of value to you, gently urge friends to subscribe. Thank you.
Cloudbusting. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbusting. Accessed February 17, 2025.
I am so appreciating you as I sit in my comfy chair enjoying my morning coffee, hot and fresh! I have had to do the “act as if” thing many times during difficult times in my life and for me it worked. I smiled when my heart was broken, laughed when I was scared, and pretended all was well when it wasn’t. It actually lightened all of the darkness!!!
I'll give it a try. I forwarded this to my siblings because you mentioned fresh hot coffee. That is one of the anchors we share. A few hundred people gathered at Plymouth Rock on President's Day with an array of signs protesting the Trump/Musk Horrors. The atmosphere was determined, although we all froze to death. Some cars honked and waved, some men flipped us the bird. It felt good to simply hold my sign USA out of GAZA and know I at least did SOMETHING.