This morning, I woke up and noticed that it was raining. It was not like the rain during the monsoon, which would make me worry about my commute to the office. There was something different about it. When I started to commute to work, the rain had already stopped, but the weather didn’t change back to normal. It didn’t feel like a regular summer in Chennai. It felt pleasant and refreshing.

Then the whole day felt like that. The same places that I walked around the office felt a little bit different today. Everyone seemed a little bit happier than usual. In fact, someone asked me why I looked happier today. At that time, I didn’t know the answer to that question. But later when I thought about it, the sudden rain in the middle of a hot summer was the reason for that extra smile on my face.

This summer rain reminded me of those blurry images during summer days at my college, when I was roaming around campus. Those childhood days, when my cousins and I were jumping back and forth between my grandparents’ houses. Like this, there were a lot of memories.

I was wondering, what was the reason for all these things? I checked on the internet if the weather and environment actually have this much power. It said the following - there is proven research suggesting that weather, sunlight, and the environment could greatly influence our mood, energy, and cognition.

Even though there is research supporting that a specific temperature of the environment can boost our happiness, the same research also suggests that this is not an absolute number and can drastically differ based on location, lifestyle, age, and many other factors.

So did the cold weather actually improve my mood here? No, here the science is a little bit different — our brain releases dopamine when it experiences something new in the middle of monotonous days. This was the reason for this sudden change in mood.

Science apart, this reminded me of something else. In our life also, there will be rainy days in the middle of a very hot summer, or sunny days in the middle of a very hectic monsoon. Both of them make us happy. You see, we only appreciate it when we get it as a break, but don’t appreciate it enough when we get something abundantly.

I hope there will always be some rainy days in the middle of the hot summer to remind me of this.