When it rains we open our umbrellas

The rain fell in sheets as you rode your bike home from work. The regret you felt at first for choosing to risk it and not take the bus has worn off. You are drenched from the dripping hair you brush from your eyes to the sloshing black dress socks in the worn out tennis shoes. You actually begin to enjoy it. The droplets of rain tap tapping your back. You’re not even squinting anymore.

It’s one umbrella or the next. You can choose to open the suburban umbrella; that owning a home, having a secure career, a wife and a few kids is somehow just and right and fulfilling and purposeful. Or you can open the wanderer umbrella; in which traveling, seeing, tasting, reading, and feeling are somehow just and right and fulfilling and purposeful. Or you can open the religion umbrella. Or the capitalist umbrella. Or another. Or another.

All the faces around you are hidden beneath colorful umbrellas. You have to watch out for them because they cannot not see you. You dodge through a crowd waiting at a traffic light. Almost slip on the slick marble squares interspersed with the bricks.

The pains we’ll accept and the pains we’ll avoid. Tonight I’ll have to dry my hair, change my underwear, and find a new undershirt to wear tomorrow. But I avoided leaving my bike at work, waiting for a bus, and delaying my return home.