Another school year comes and goes. For those of us in college, school is wrapping up and the summer is upon us. Although the school year is worthy of volumes full of articles, I want to talk about the summer.
While I was growing up the summer was a magical time of year, not in a Disney sort of magical- more like a manly, Lord of The Rings kind of magical. There were canoe trips to take, baseball to play, and lawns to mow. (Irrelevant aside: I love mowing the lawn. I will be the grumpy old man across the street who turns feral while protecting his lawn.) Back to how it's magical. Time slows down in the summer. That's what makes it so special, so significant. During the cold months, the months some wise soul designated as the school year, everyone puts their head down and shoulders their way through week after week of bleak, monotonous work. In the city it's evident when summer has arrived to banish the gray winter. Instead of wrapping wool pea coats tighter and dashing from building to building through inclement weather, New Yorkers stroll from place to place holding their heads high, as if they were plants drinking in the warm rays.
Enough of waxing eloquent though. What I mean to talk about is how time slows down in the summer. The clock seems to tick a little slower, the sun a little more hesitant to set. Before now I had always seen this slower pace as a yearly novelty in May, a fact of life in June, and then a nuisance in July and August. That is what I mean to change this summer. I want to make every day, May through August, a "May day." I want to view every long, sun-soaked summer day as an opportunity to live life.
My good man Ben Franklin once said, "If time be of all things most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough." If in the summer we have the most time to burn, we then risk the "greatest prodigality" most in the sunny months (Those of you with jobs: between weekends and free nights, there is time enough to waste).
This is my challenge then to all the men who read the Man Blog: don't waste the summer. Use it as a time to improve yourself; read a great book (I recommend anything Jeff Shaara or David McCullough for those of you looking for something to read), cultivate a manly hobby (I spent a bit of the start of my break working on my angling), just find something productive to do (people with jobs: if you are hard-pressed for free time focus on developing your work ethic, as a man a strong work ethic is invaluable).
Don't let these months pass you by. Each month will run by faster than the previous one. Seize each day. Carpe some diem. I am by no means a master at this. We are all in this together. I wrote this post mostly as a challenge to myself, and only a little bit for the benefit of you readers. Sorry, but I feel like I am entitled to be self-serving on my own blog. Still, I am rooting for all of you. If cheerleading were manly (a topic for another post- perhaps that one will generate some comments), you could think of me as your cheerleader throughout the summer.
The bottom line is that this will not be a lazy summer. It will be a summer of growth and good times. Let's live this summer.
Enough of waxing eloquent though. What I mean to talk about is how time slows down in the summer. The clock seems to tick a little slower, the sun a little more hesitant to set. Before now I had always seen this slower pace as a yearly novelty in May, a fact of life in June, and then a nuisance in July and August. That is what I mean to change this summer. I want to make every day, May through August, a "May day." I want to view every long, sun-soaked summer day as an opportunity to live life.
My good man Ben Franklin once said, "If time be of all things most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough." If in the summer we have the most time to burn, we then risk the "greatest prodigality" most in the sunny months (Those of you with jobs: between weekends and free nights, there is time enough to waste).
This is my challenge then to all the men who read the Man Blog: don't waste the summer. Use it as a time to improve yourself; read a great book (I recommend anything Jeff Shaara or David McCullough for those of you looking for something to read), cultivate a manly hobby (I spent a bit of the start of my break working on my angling), just find something productive to do (people with jobs: if you are hard-pressed for free time focus on developing your work ethic, as a man a strong work ethic is invaluable).
Don't let these months pass you by. Each month will run by faster than the previous one. Seize each day. Carpe some diem. I am by no means a master at this. We are all in this together. I wrote this post mostly as a challenge to myself, and only a little bit for the benefit of you readers. Sorry, but I feel like I am entitled to be self-serving on my own blog. Still, I am rooting for all of you. If cheerleading were manly (a topic for another post- perhaps that one will generate some comments), you could think of me as your cheerleader throughout the summer.
The bottom line is that this will not be a lazy summer. It will be a summer of growth and good times. Let's live this summer.
