I have always found summer to hold a sense of relief. It’s a season I look forward to knowing that I can pack my bags again in this small luggage as I prepare to finally go back to the province after the busy days I spent studying in the city. I always feel like it is an opportunity to be reminded of the importance of breathing slowly. Despite summer's heat, it is the time of the year when the sun shines a bit brighter, slow mornings are preferred, and flowers seem to blossom beautifully. It is indeed a time I also learn the definition of home. They say a home is different from a house because it holds a sort of feeling rather than just a property. Whether it is an actual place or even a person, as long as solace is available, it can be part of the ways we define home. And summer is what I imagine home feels like.
Summer solace is a space in the year to reflect and meet our introspective moments where they’re at. This definition is how I find summer a season where we all go back home, whether it is a place we visit, people that bring us peace, or a space we can create within us. Throughout the days of the year, most of it is filled with the hustle and bustle, to move and adapt quickly on the long to-do lists. But, for some reason, it is during the summers that I am reminded to learn how to pause. It’s a time when I know the rest between the busy months before and after the summer season.
It reminds me of the poem by Kalpesh Dasai on what summer looks like for me, its title is “Solace,” and it says,
Someday our journey home
Will be paved with flowers,
And the million thoughts that roam
Will find solace under these bowers
As humans, we tend to think a lot and adhere to the expectations in our multi-faceted society. And so, thinking becomes uncomfortable to sit with, or we’re afraid of not having enough time for it. Our everyday realities tend to become more valuable depending on the number of big things we achieve, checking off our to-do list one by one and adding more to the long lists of what we want to achieve. But summer wakes us up and tells us that the rocky road is fulfilling because of the flowers and trees dancing at the end of the road. The phrase “someday our journey home” holds motivation because we have something and someone to say goodbye and hello to; it’s how summer should feel. In all those plans and goals to be accomplished, we should find the calmness to fuel us throughout as we slowly reach our dreams.
Summer peaks like a warm embrace that allows us to clearly view the beautiful things in these little lives around us in the brighter months that come – a particular pleasant feeling from our conscious attempt to notice the things around us and within us even more. Summer is a season where all the things we wish to try have an opportunity to come to life one by one as we find home in all the different places and experiences we create and feel for ourselves. A time to come back to the hobbies we set aside, chase the creativity that felt overwhelming, and seek the adventures awaiting us as mindfully as possible.