Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer?

Summer is officially here.  Yesterday was our longest day.  Two days in the last week the heat index flirted with 100 degrees before dropping back to a high in the low 70s yesterday.  I have been staycationing, and I've loved moving at a slower pace.  One day I took a bicycle trip to another town with a friend.  It felt good to move.  I've walked a lot, got some dancing in, and completed my once-a-year read of a novel.  (Fanny Flagg's The All-Girl Filling Station Reunion. It was great fun.) I even spontaneously dropped everything to take in a movie matinee.

Summer reading lists speak to an assumption that in summer we have more time to read.  Maybe there is even the assumption that we have more time.  There is a logic there that seems to follow a natural order of things.  It is too hot to do much other than read or at least in the middle of the day.  When I was young, we did chores in the early morning hours when it was cooler, so that we could be lazier during the hotter part of the day.  When I was doing distance running in my thirties, I would use the other end of the day, planning my long runs to start at the end of the day when the sun had dropped below the horizon and cooler air began to waft in its wake. 

Yet, in reality, except for a vacation week like this last one, the pace of life seems not to  have slowed during the summer for years, certainly since adulthood.  I will work the same long hours next week in the official summer as I did during the long dark days of winter.  A colleague has already texted me before noon on Sunday about work we will do together tomorrow.  A few summers ago a consulting gig had me literally working every waking hour of the summer, often falling asleep on my computer with exhaustion. With the exception of school teachers who are out for the summer, but they are often taking classes and making lesson plans for next school year, is there really anyone for whom summer is lazier?

Sadly, I even note that for children in this area that summer isn't even lazier, just different.  Most of my friends who have children began orchestrating summer activities in the winter and early spring so that a sequence of camps keeps their kids engaged in productive learning experiences all summer.  While I fully understand the need of working parents to have their children engaged in safe activities, I am kind of sad for the kids that they don't have the freedom to explore and create the non-structured fun that marked summers during my childhood.

This last week has been renewing for me.  I've slept better.  I feel better physically from having moved more.  The fiction reading has stimulated my creativity.  My dreams have been more active.  I've certainly felt more in synch with my body's own rhythms.  I noticed when I was tired, and twice I laid down and took an afternoon nap.  (I cannot imagine why it is that kids resist taking naps.) Yet I know that the time has been way too short to really make an impact.  A few hours into my day tomorrow, my down time will seem a distant memory.

Nature has a lot to teach us.  In the fall seeds drop from flowers, fruits, and vegetables.  They embed themselves in the soil, and they rest for months.  The harder casings of the seeds soften as they rot away over the months and make it easier for new life to spring forth.  As days get longer and warmer in the spring, new life springs forth and a season of rapid growth and productivity follows.  Even in biblical times, it was understood that a time for soil to lay fallow was important, a practice that has been born out scientifically.

Why then do we think that we as human beings could not benefit from lazier days in summer?  I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that until the Industrial Revolution the average person worked two hours a day.  There were some very long days at times of planting, harvest, or the hunt, but there were also lazy days by the spring fishing and winter days by the hearth.  I don't want to suggest that those were idyllic times, because I understand that there were harsher realities of those days. However, we seem to be hard-wired to have more down time that we allow ourselves these days.

I can only wonder what it would be like if we all had extended down time to nourish our creativity in the summer, as some European countries do.  Would we be able to find common ground from contentiousness if we had down time to ponder the benefits?  Would we discover easier, better, or more creative ways to work if we relaxed our minds from what is and allowed reflection on what might be? Would we be more compassionate with our co-workers if we didn't feel stretched to our limits all the time?  Would we suffer from fewer stress-related illnesses?  Would we feel better if we had less news being piped to us 24 x 7?

Sadly, I can't see a mass movement for a summer downtime emerging, but I think there would be significant benefit to collective lazy, hazy days of summer.

Oxygen

Oxygen (O2) -- According to Google, "a colorless, odorless reactive gas, the chemical element of atomic number 8 and the life-supporting component of the air."  Especially "the life-supporting component of air."  We don't think about it much.  Through a miraculous process called photosynthesis, our plants and trees deliver oxygen to us so routinely that most of us take for granted the air we breathe.

Today I helped design a game in which children would figure out how many trees needed to be around them to deliver enough oxygen to support that individual's life.  Quite a concept. 

Oxygen comes in many forms.  There is "the colorless, odorless reactive gas, the chemical element of life..." oxygen.  There is also metaphorical oxygen which become the "life-supporting component of the air."  Anytime we find hope in an otherwise hopeless situation, we have found oxygen. 

A friend of mine once told me that for months after his wife's death, his world was black. The only thing that kept him going, day to day, was his need to care for his young son.  Then, he said, one beautiful spring day as he walked to his car to go to work, he saw a flower blooming. He knew he had turned a corner. The flower had become his oxygen. He would make it without her.

This week I am attending a creativity and innovation class.  My graduate research was on creativity and leadership.  My creativity takes many forms: writing, dance/choreography, gardening, food display, and even on occasion music. I've consulted organizations on increasing creativity. When I have been deeply into writing a book, I find all of my creative outlets flourish.  I am a marginal pianist the rest of the time, but when I am writing, I have been known to compose and perform concerti. 

Yet, at the beginning of the class, when we took a creativity assessment, I had a very low "average" score.  It didn't surprise me.  I feel as if I work in a creative straight jacket, where even the glimmer of a creative thought can invoke the wrath of my supervisor, and severe consequences will inevitably follow.  During the first break, I spoke to the instructor.  How can I be "low average?" Then, a wave of emotion washed over me, "I feel dead here," I said.  I do...feel dead there.

This week my oxygen has been this class, not that it has been that good a class: it hasn't.  But it has provided me with creative oxygen--a life supporting component of creativity.  I've found myself doodling thoughts for a book in the margins of my class notes--a book that has been languishing in my computer for years.  It just needed oxygen.  Ahh!  Breathe deeply now: in and out and in and out.  I have one more day of creative oxygen.  I am relishing the prospect.

When we get on an airplane, the TSA spiel informs parents that in the event of emergency, they should put the oxygen on themselves before attempting to help their children.  Day after day, I've been attempting to bring oxygen to my client groups without following TSA's advice to take care of myself first.  On Thursday, I will jump deeply back into client work again.  This time I will remember to take care of myself first.