Something magical happens at this time of year. The morning breeze whispers the promise of longer and brighter days, seducing us with their radiant glory and enticing us to shed our winter layers and come out to play. If winter is our jailer, imprisoning us in the coziness of our homes, then summer is the rebellious inmate who finds a clandestine way to set us free. Even the most well-behaved prisoner who has become resigned to his fate will struggle with the temptation summer proffers. Liberation and summer go hand in hand. The two glide together on a motorbike fuelled by adrenalin, whizzing down open country lanes and with the wind whipping at loose hair. As the warmer days heat our mind, our body and our souls, we acquire a certain lightness and have a new spring in a step. Like sunflowers, our faces are upturned to receive a kiss of vitality that only the sun can bestow.
The sense of liberation started when I was a child. Summer holidays were eons filled with carelessness and frivolity. Each fiery sunset melted into a fresh new day, though no particular day stood out from the rest. Time was a blurry concept, starting out as something whole, but later melting like the sweet vanilla ice-cream trickling down the cone and onto my fingers. I had no concept of past, nor of any particular future. Life was all that was unfolding at that very moment, and I was quite sure that I would be young forever.
That is the summer paradox: on the one had the continual days of sunshine lull you into a false sense of eternity, yet on the other hand we are victims to the short night that tantalize with their brevity. This is why summer is so intoxicating. We yearn to get our fill, desperate to cling onto these fleeting moments of perfection. We often live out our teenage summers in a wild, unbridled euphoria. Hormones and heat provide a heady catalyst from which unfurls an inexplicable desire to experiment with alcohol and the opposite sex.
Summer. You provided the most wonderful backdrop to many a love story. The short and intense variety. Long and languid days full of fraught desire, culminating in a thunderstorm when all passion was unleashed. The love would last until the autumn leaves fell, yet I could not see beyond those glorious days. The most vivid of all my memories can be found, etched in the albums of my mind. The times when I have felt so wonderfully alive. The time when I knew I could never die.
Why not create a little summer in our lives, whenever we choose?
Shiny Happy Me 