cktimes.ca Archives for Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
EACH PASSING SUMMER BRINGS THE COLDNESS OF LIFE INTO CLEARER FOCUS
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Summer is such a fleeting thing. It seems like only last week it was June and an entire sunny summer stretched endlessly out before us.We all made countless plans to do a million things that we planned on doing last summer but never had the time. This summer we felt that there would be loads of time to complete social engagements, books that needed to be read, take long bike rides, go to more theatre, get back to golfing, spend more time relaxing and a host of other things that seemed so absolutely achievable in June.
But....alas.... here it is with that most horrible of all holiday weekends, Labour Day, once again bearing down upon us like some maniacal evil demon waiting to snatch hazy summer days and mystic summer eves away from us before we truly got to know them.
I once thought that after I retired from teaching that I would no longer dread Labour Day and that I might even look forward to the peace and serenity that so many people had stated that they loved about Fall.
Unfortunately, that never happened for me. I still hate summer's closure with a passion. Although it no longer means the dreaded ringing of the school bell impatiently beckoning me, one more time, back to reality, responsibility and the coldness of a regimented life it does, with dead certainty, signify that I am one year older.
Teachers, no matter how old, or years retired, still mark the passing of a year not by January 1sts but by Labour Day weekends.
The impending coolness, that so quickly turns to coldness, brings home to me the undeniable fact that I am no longer young. It hastens to remind me that just as I know that there were things that I could not accomplish this summer, there will many other things that I know I will not have time to accomplish in life.
The arrival of each September reminds me that there are many things in life that I one day, in the back recesses of my mind, thought that I would achieve or do or see and realize, with vivid, jolting clarity, that I will never accomplish. The list grows with each blast of cold air and shortening summerís day.
I guess I am pondering this rather dark concept tonight because I was, this past weekend, at a social event where there was an abundance of "twenty-somethings". These young men and women seemed so full of life, so full of confidence and seemed so focused and vibrant. They danced, chatted, laughed and socialized with, what appeared to me, utter abandon.
These were not the insecure, surly teenagers who were often at a loss as to their future that I remembered from my high school teaching experiences but, rather, young adults, most with a university degrees, good jobs and a direction in life.
To my "fifty something" eyes they seemed full of promise, energy, and potential. Their posture, words and manner screamed out to me that they were ready to face whatever life had to offer and, no matter how large the hurdle, they would, with ease and great aplomb, vault over it.
I pondered whether I ever appeared this way to some older person when I was that age. I suppose that I must have but I know that I never in wildest dreams ever realized it or even contemplated it at the time.
I am sure that in their hearts they do not have the same courage, conviction and bravado that I see within them. It is, like so much in life, a mirage or a projection seen by the observant outsider but never truly felt by the possessor.
I was looking at them from the other end of the telescope and I saw that which they will not see until they too are invisible middle age individuals.
They will not see the power they now possess and the potential they exude until they are pondering lost youth, lost summers, and lost opportunities some wistful, late summerís eve in a darkened hall as the coldness of one more Fall incessantly creeps.
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
