For my kids, this week is the start of summer, defined by the last day of school. Weeks of endless sunshine and possibilities lay out before them like an ocean of opportunity. I remember that feeling like it was yesterday. Waking up super early, out the door like a shot, filled with an excitement that was often lacking the rest of the school year. I sat in the classroom, desk cleared and clean, my teachers just a little friendlier, my friends revved up and raring to go. Then the bell rings, another school year was done, and summer was waiting for me. I was on the hunt for fun.
When I look back on those days, I miss the butterflies; the anticipation of a stretch of time where schedules fade away and life takes on an air of adventure. So today I’m asking you: what if we lived our lives like the last day of school? What if we viewed our lives, as adults, as the wide-open adventure of summer vacation?
Every once in a while, on a Saturday or Sunday, my sons and I will climb in the car and head out looking for an early morning adventure. On those days, I feel a small piece of what I remember from that last day of school. But then my cell phone rings or an urgent email shows up, and I lose my tentative grasp and find myself thrust back into the business of life.
It’s amazing to realize that once upon a time, we didn’t have cell phones or email. We lived our lives off the grid, within the confines of our neighborhood blocks, freedom defined by the distance between home and 7-11 and how much fun we could find between the two. Drinking Slurpees, going from house to house with my friends, raiding pantries and eating whatever we could. I always had a job to pay for my 7-11 runs, but mostly it was wide-open fun.
We should not let technology or business or the craziness of modern life take that summer fun away. Have that bonfire, take the long way around. Ride bikes and eat ice cream and get messy. Remember the promises you made to yourself as a kid. They started with “When I’m an adult, I’m not going to…” and ended with whatever the antithesis of freedom was to you at the time. Be free! And have the summer of your dreams, wide open, my hunters!
