It was that summer night. The moon was full, and the sounds of the night were brilliantly orchestrated by the cicadas and the tree frogs. The morning birds were hushed, and the blistering afternoon sun had set, it was a summer night to remember. I stopped to imagine how many of these summer nights had I seen and how many might be left?
The seasons bring their own packages of memories….summer brings me to childhood. That was a place where a popsicle on a summer afternoon was all it took to enter a space of pure happiness and complete contentedness, to be happy exactly where you were, doing exactly what you were doing…a popsicle, a backyard swing, and a summer afternoon. The focus was on the pure joy, never on thoughts of somewhere else to be or where someone else might be, just you and your icy treat, cooling down and enjoying that moment.
Funny, but that simple moment is still with me. My mind was free of unnecessary clutter then. I did not know what others were doing nor did I compare myself to strangers on a screen…I was just filling in the moments to make me me. My thoughts were my thoughts, thoughts that were stimulated and provoked by my environment, an environment that was largely the outdoors and the perimeter of my house, in other words, nature and family, not TV and Instagram.
I think about those not so long-ago days and have concern for these days. There is so much available falsehood bombarding our children and young people today…how does a child discover their true self amidst a virtual world brimming with deception?
Comments