My goal in life is, essentially, to do work that affords me what amounts to an endless summer: spend Christmas and summer in the Philippines (they’re consecutive seasons in this part of the world), and pack my bags for elsewhere during the punishing storm season.

However, as I am nowhere near that goal, I must endure, like everyone else here, week after week of schizophrenic weather, dominated by the usual “scattered thunderstorms and rainshowers,” with the increasingly likely chance of a climate change-induced apocalyptic superstorm as the season winds down.

But just the other day, I read that in a matter of months, Manila would be one of the hardest hit by drought from El Niño. And so, as these raindrops began to fall on my windshield, I paused as I realized: I am grateful for this rain.

Even storms deserve their season, I guess. They teach us the art of enduring, of planning ahead, and —- cliche as it has come to sound —- of dancing in the rain.