Rain usually has a depressing connotation, but when I saw it descending on the profusion of city lights, I felt nothing but joy.

Something as simple as someone playing with your hair, pulling on long knee socks on a cold winter morning, crisp leaves crunching beneath your feet, or the steady trickle of rain tapping on a skylight at night can bring more happiness and serenity than the bigger things. Sure, getting a new North Face is pretty rad, but it is material happiness. The purest, most innocent form of happiness comes from everyday things we overlook and take for granted.

Living in one of the wettest parts of the nation, it was strange to have a very dry, hot summer. The Pacific Northwest is known for shivering showers, iridescent dewdrops dripping from evergreen branches, and a chill that never goes away, so seeing blue skies and feeling the delicate airbrush of a warm summer breeze was amazing. However, being a true Washingtonian, I couldn’t help but ache for the rain. Everything seemed different without the spongy green moss. I longed for the soft feeling of slipping on a sweatshirt but couldn’t wear one in the heat. Lake levels were low, and I never missed a gray overcast day as much as I did that summer.

Toward the end of July I was going to a concert in downtown Seattle. Sunny skies were the forecast – again. That day lived up to its prediction, but a miracle happened too. It was a blind side that took everyone by surprise. I was walking out of a store, about to head to the venue, when I felt it: a raindrop.

It was small, cold, and definitely water. The raindrop dampened my shoulder like a crying toddler’s cheeks. I immediately looked at the sky when another fell. Then another. Before I knew it the clouds finally pulled through and it rained for the first time in weeks. A familiar, musky smell of petrichor surrounded me, as did the sound of rustling as everyone pulled their hoods on. The soil soaked up every drop, and my thirst for the rain was quenched.

Rain during a concert is not usually ideal, but that day it could have poured and I would have been overjoyed. Something as small as precipitation reminded me that we do not need big things to create happiness. If we value what we have been given, we will find at least one thing to be happy about every day. For example, the other day there was fog. Something as ordinary as low-floating clouds made my morning, and that sweet feeling of bliss followed me all day. Other times it’s end-of-the-day sunsets featuring drenched orange skies. These are things given to everyone, every day, and I still feel satisfaction and delight when I take time to notice them, to find happiness in the simplest of things.