Mid-summer night's nightmare, again

Summer’s half over and I’m feeling the panic already.

I live for the summer, with the humidity and extended daylight and the warmth that caresses me when I walk out the door in the morning. The rest of the year, I live for pizza and bourbon, but even those necessities of life recede when the sun crosses the Tropic of Cancer and, perversely, it’s all downhill from there.

Summer is a race against the forces of nature, beginning as the sunlight peaks at the solstice and then slides into the dark like an allegory on aging. Summer mocks us with increasing warmth and escalating darkness, daring us to waste a day before it's gone. It taunts us into squandering the moments, leaving the gift unopened until it has evaporated into the might-have and should-have of regret.

Why did I agree to those meetings? Why did I block out time for lunches, indoors, when I could be out on the patio, watching cyclists on the lake shore? Why am I watching cyclists on the lake shore when I could be joining them, gleefully accepting Daniel Burnham’s gift to Chicago and savoring God’s gift to eternity? 

It’s the same every year as I come up with a plan to maximize relaxation--itself a contradiction--and vow not to waste as many moments as in prior years. And every year August arrives with the looming regret of a failed mission. I haven’t spent enough time on the bike path. I haven’t spent enough dawns at the river’s edge. I haven’t made the most of yet another blessing in my path.

Summer’s half over and I’m feeling the panic already.

This is the recurring failure in my life, so predictable that I should be inured by now. Summer arrives as I’m still ramping up for the season, still burdened by the leftover commitments of winter and spring. I begin to unload and redirect my calendar, but life invades and the days refill with odds and ends that break up the cadence.

It's the story of our lives and we all follow the same path. We vow to appreciate it more, savor it more, observe and remember it more, but we cannot get enough. Time and again, we find ourselves wanting in our enjoyment of The Gift. Whether it’s summer or life itself, we fail and rise to fail again, because it’s never possible to enjoy it enough in the time we have.

Every day, life is the gift card with an expiration date. The date isn’t printed on the label, but it’s in there somewhere. Summer is a subset, the gift I treasure that also expires. Best by September 20, sometimes September 21, but never December 21.

How is it August already? How am I not on the Prairie Path? What happened to all those lazy lunches at Navy Pier and 31st Street beach and dinners on the patio at Erie Café? I know it’s supposed to be relaxing, but I have a schedule to keep and I’m falling behind again, just as I did last year and the year before and the year before and….

Summer’s half over and I’m feeling the panic already.
 
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