I was at a London souvenir store last week when I saw an umbrella being sold for £20.

“20 pounds?!” I thought to myself. The most I would ever pay for an umbrella would be £10. Maybe £15, max.

A few days later, I was walking to the hospital when it began to rain. Except this was no ordinary rain: it came violently, all at once, like floodgates opening above your head. Within seconds, the whole street was drenched. I was still 12 minutes from the hospital and dove under the nearest building I could find.

I found myself inside a little electronics store.

“Do you sell umbrellas?” I asked.

“£20,” the shopkeeper replied. I handed over the money without even thinking. It was a cheap, plain umbrella, far worse quality than the one from the souvenir store.

Only later did I realise how fast my value judgment had shifted with context. On a sunny day, buying a £20 umbrella was wasteful. On a rainy day, it was a necessity.

I think the broader lesson is the value of anything—be it an object, a person, an experience, or even knowledge—is deeply tied to circumstance. What seems trivial in one moment might prove invaluable in another. The real tragedy would be to disregard something permanently based on a single, contextual judgment.