The first night of summer always seems surreal, like that moment you’ve waited for for so long that when it arrives you can’t actually feel it. To counteract that mischief of the mind, I ask that we take a moment to inhabit the moment. Pause whatever you are doing and make a memory with me. Walk to the nearest door and step outside into the evening air. Breathe it in deeply, slowly, intentionally. Focus on everything you are feeling, everything you are observing, everything you are experiencing.
Now let your eyes close, and imagine you are on some beautiful secluded island, safe and protected, perhaps in a doorway looking out toward the ocean. You hear the distant waves, you feel the gentle breeze, you can almost smell the salty seaspray. Once, your feet slipped into the ocean, once you became one with the sea, once you felt the sand between the toes and the sun on your face and the water lapping at your ankles.
If it happened in the past, somewhere it’s still happening there – a loop of time that you can bring to mind whenever you want it. A temporal trick of the brain that humans have to transport and transform as desired, and a key component to imagination and escapism. Never underestimate the power of both.
On this first night of summer, let it wash over you: the season, the start, the sultry promise of more. There is peace here if you let yourself find it. Calm and tranquility too, along with the gentle pull of the proverbial sea, coaxing us to restful unforced slumber.
Welcome summer…
