I’ve been enjoying the not-as-infrequently-as-promised rain in Boston this summer, probably because of its novelty as a permanent California resident. One of my (newly) favorite activities while it’s raining is to walk around, pretending for a moment to adopt the mindset of a tree, who, I imagine, revels in the thought of getting soaking wet. This being said, as much as I enjoy this arboreal fantasy, I most certainly do not enjoy when my socks get soaking wet. (I enjoy many other canonically unpleasant activities precisely because they are universally unpleasant and therefore allude to the idea of a shared human experience. But this is where I draw the line.) To combat my phobia of having wet socks, I have decided to exclusively wear flip flops when it rains, accepting my fate as someone with wet feet (but importantly, not wet socks).
This is not meant to (only) be an exposition on the current, former, or future moisture content of my socks, but is rather meant to set the scene for the moment when I happened upon my local coffee roaster, happily splashing through the puddles down the street in my flip flops. At this instant I realized that my life, which was already quite enjoyable re:my new-found enjoyment of rain, would be significantly more enjoyable with the companionship of a warm cup of coffee. And in exchange for 6 minutes at work (my new value-assessment scheme), I received far more than 6 minutes of enjoyment for the remainder of my walk, and even more than that in the reflections of the aforementioned enjoyment.