Or a new and different kind of peace. The kind that is seen climbing through the rubble of grief or trauma, making its way to the top of the disaster as it stretches its limbs and breathes deeply into the clear sky.

Johnny Nash released the song in 1972, after spending time in Jamaica immersed in reggae rhythms that would flavor the track’s warm optimism. He reportedly wrote it while recovering from (promise we’re not kidding here) eye surgery (Weinger, 1993).

I can see clearly now

So while his eye was bandaged up (notice where we put the extra lyrics in the print) and experiencing the lifting of a literal fog, he wrote a metaphor that caught fire.

The rain is gone...

...Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

The obstacles are disappearing.

But wait, that’s not the lyric!

He actually says he can see clearly now, but he doesn’t say the obstacles are gone! Instead, he says…

I can see all obstacles in my way

So it’s not that the seeing clearly fixes everything—or fixes anything for that matter—but rather that seeing clearly allows a precise awareness of the obstacles. And that precise awareness offers a choice: to blame the barriers, or to decide that clarity of what’s wrong is what will ensure a successful plan to address it. With clear vision, and honesty and accuracy about the obstacles, a plan is made.

And the ability to make a plan, clear-sighted, obstacles in view, dictates the reality of the next line:

It’s gonna be a bright, bright sun-shiny day.

The words are gentle but insistent, like a good friend’s hand on your shoulder saying “You don’t believe me yet, but knowing that this is what’s happening, that these are the things you’ve got to address, that’s going to change everything. You’ve got this now. You’ve got this in your back pocket now!”

And this kind of messaging matters, whether from a friend or a vinyl from the early seventies. Neuroscience tells us that when we’re overwhelmed, our prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for decision-making and perspective—goes offline. That’s when the amygdala, our internal panic button, takes the wheel (Arnsten, 2009).

But clarity of hope is a neurological intervention. Optimistic phrases buried in our psyche like a liturgy can cue the brain’s dopamine pathways, giving us just enough lift to take the next step of the plan that ends in a sun-shiny day (Sharot et al., 2011).

A lyric like 'I can see clearly now' becomes a kind of mantra—a small act of resistance against despair, and a biological trigger shifting us out of internal despair and forward into planning and reasoning and subversive, hopeful, conspiring.

In the world of social work, we often talk about 'reframing.' It’s not about denial; it’s about seeing the same picture from a new angle. Own the facts, but tell a better story about them.

Nash doesn’t pretend there was no storm. He simply names its passing and the clarity that the sunshine offers on what the true situation is.

And, like the morning after a midnight tornado, standing in the dawn’s light and looking at the destruction, we see the damage for what it is.

And the damage is heartbreaking. Worth crying over. Here in West Tennessee, we know what it’s like to wake up and survey the loss after a night of tornados.

But the morning after, when the sun rises and we can see clearly,

We weep. And then we make a plan.

That’s the power of narrative in healing work: honoring what hurt without getting stuck there. The song is a model of strengths-based practice. It invites people to believe that change isn’t just possible—it’s already on the horizon (Saleebey, 2006).

There’s something almost childlike about the faith of Nash’s reggae-inspired, post-eye-surgery, vision-related song.

Maybe that’s why it holds up decades later.

Because sometimes, healing is less about solving and more about honestly noticing and courageously hoping. Maybe it’s about that moment when the sun cuts through the blinds, when our chest feels a little less tight, when the world seems just a shade more possible than it did the day before.

That’s what Johnny Nash gave us: a weather report for the soul.

The rain is gone.

The light breaks in.

And even when we can’t feel it yet or see it yet, and even when the storm is still happening so we can’t review the damage to be dealt with yet...

Even those moments don’t mean it isn’t coming.

I mean, it’s ultimately, at some point, gonna be a bright, bright, sun-shiny day.