On Summer

"Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."

— Edith Wharton

Wharton captures something ineffable here. It's not the words themselves but what they evoke: languid hours, golden light, the luxury of time stretching out. A summer afternoon holds possibility - for reading, for wandering, for doing nothing at all. In our hurried modern lives, we rarely allow ourselves this kind of spaciousness. Summer afternoons remind us that not all time needs to be productive. Some hours are meant simply for existing, for absorbing warmth and light, for being alive in the fullness of the season.

"Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January."

— Hal Borland

Borland's financial metaphor reveals a deep truth about seasonal living: we borrow from summer's abundance and pay for it in winter's scarcity. But there's also a more personal meaning. The joy of summer days comes due in January when we're cold and confined, remembering warmth. We spend summer's gifts - the energy, the light, the freedom - faster than we realize, and then must live on those memories through darker months. This makes summer precious: it's not just pleasure in the moment, but provision for harder times ahead.

"Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it."

— Russell Baker

Baker names summer's strange masochism. We endure heat, humidity, mosquitoes, sunburn - discomforts that would seem intolerable in another context - and call it pleasure. Why? Because summer gives us something worth the suffering: freedom, beauty, long evenings, the permission to slow down. We accept summer's demands because summer's gifts outweigh them. This is true of many things we love: they ask something of us, they make us uncomfortable, but we embrace them anyway because what they give us matters more than what they cost us.

"Do what we can, summer will have its flies."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson reminds us that even summer - the most idealized season - comes with irritations. No season is perfect, no experience is pure pleasure. There are always flies in summer, rain on vacation, mosquitoes at the picnic. The wisdom isn't in eliminating these annoyances (we can't) but in accepting them as part of the package. Summer's flies don't negate summer's sunshine. Learning to take the imperfect good, rather than demanding impossible perfection, is the path to contentment in any season.

"It will not always be summer: build barns."

— Hesiod

Ancient Hesiod offers timeless practical wisdom: use abundance to prepare for scarcity. When times are good, don't assume they'll continue forever. Build, save, prepare. This applies to more than literal harvests. When we're experiencing success, health, happiness, we should remember these are seasonal. Use good seasons to build resources - financial, emotional, spiritual - that will sustain you when the seasons turn. Summer's blessing isn't just its warmth but its opportunity to prepare for winter's cold.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate."

— William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's famous line works by praising someone through contrast with summer. Even summer's day - beautiful as it is - has flaws: it's too hot, too changeable, too brief. The beloved surpasses even this standard of beauty. But Shakespeare is also telling us something about summer itself: that we idealize it but it's actually "rough" and intemperate. Our mental summer - the memory, the dream - is more perfect than any actual summer day. We love summer partly for being an imperfect beauty, for being real rather than ideal.

"A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken."

— James Dent

Dent's humor reveals a truth: that perfect days require escape from obligations. The broken lawn mower is perfect because it gives us permission to rest, to enjoy the day without the guilt of undone chores. How often do we need such excuses? We feel we must earn leisure through work, when sometimes leisure itself is the work we most need to do. A perfect summer day isn't perfect conditions - it's perfect freedom from the tyranny of should.

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

— Albert Camus

Camus transforms summer from season to spiritual metaphor. The invincible summer within is resilience, hope, the capacity for joy that survives even the darkest times. External winter cannot destroy this internal summer if we protect it. This is what gets us through hard times - the knowledge that within us lies warmth that cannot be extinguished, light that darkness cannot overcome. When I'm in my own winter, I try to remember Camus's words: the summer is still there, buried but undefeated, waiting to resurface.

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time."

— John Lubbock

Lubbock defends what our productive culture attacks: apparently purposeless leisure. Lying in grass, watching clouds - this looks like idleness, but it's actually essential rest and renewal. Our souls need these unstructured times as much as our bodies need sleep. Summer invites this kind of rest, but we've been trained to feel guilty about it. Lubbock's words give us permission: this isn't wasted time, it's time invested in the self that will emerge restored and refreshed.

"People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy."

— Anton Chekhov

Chekhov suggests that happiness makes us indifferent to external conditions. When we're truly happy, the season doesn't matter - we're warm in winter, comfortable in summer, sustained by internal joy that transcends external circumstance. But the inverse is also true: when we're unhappy, no season pleases us. Even summer feels burdensome. This reminds us that our experience of the world depends at least as much on our internal state as on external conditions. The season is less important than the spirit in which we meet it.

Closing Reflection

Summer is the season we remember, the season we long for, the season we try to bottle and preserve. Photo albums overflow with summer images. Our happiest memories cluster in summer's warm glow. We speak of "endless summer" as if we could make it permanent through sheer will.

But summer's beauty is inseparable from its temporality. We love it partly because it passes. If every day were a summer day, we'd lose our appreciation for its gifts. The seasons teach us that everything has its time, everything must end so something else can begin.

What we can carry from summer into other seasons isn't the warmth itself but the spirit of summer: the spaciousness, the willingness to rest, the permission to enjoy, the capacity for wonder at simple beauty. That invincible summer Camus spoke of - we cultivate it in actual summer so it can sustain us through every other season of our lives.