On Running After One's Hat

Chesterton's classic essay opens with his "almost savage envy" on hearing that London has been flooded in his absence. Where others see inconvenience, he sees Battersea turned into a Venice — boats from the butcher, gondolier-greengrocers, an archipelago of poetry. The piece is a sustained argument that an "adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered, and an inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered." Running after a windblown hat, missing a train, even being flooded out — all are pure pleasures if you frame them as games.