It was the books of childhood that did it. All those idylls in the countryside or on sandy beaches. Summer contained the essence of relaxation and fun, and a feeling that life stretched endlessly onwards, peacefully.
It was, of course, all fiction – but we wanted the fiction to be true. And, to an extent, it all merged into one. In my childhood the summer holidays in Glasgow lasted 10 weeks. There was no urgency to do anything. We roamed the streets and the parks (there are a surprising number of parks in Glasgow), and, largely, we were free of adults. Bliss at the feeling that time had more or less stopped. And fascination at what was going on around us; the re-surfacing of a road could have us transfixed for days.
But all that has changed. Research shows that warm weather and holidays bring not bliss, but anxiety. If we are on holiday, summer must be running out. Have we filled every hour and minute with useful and supremely satisfying activity? No, the answer comes, we have not.
There they were, middle-aged men looking grim and staring even more grimly at laptops
Summer becomes a vast hourglass upended. The answer, as with almost anything, is to keep it simple. You don’t have to call it your inner Zen, but that is what you must pursue.
Lose the laptop
And there are several rules to apply here if you are to let your mind run free as you lie beside the pool or on the beach, or rambling through the streets around a Mediterranean cathedral. The first is to ensure you have no access to a laptop. During the Lord’s Test earlier this summer, a fascinating sporting struggle in weather so glorious that the authorities even relaxed their rule on wearing jackets, I popped into the reading room. There they were, middle-aged men looking grim as can be and staring even more grimly at laptops. This is the precise opposite of the search for enlightenment or enjoyment.
The second rule is not to touch any of the vital, must-read business or management books of the day as recommended by the serious newspapers’ editors. Leave them at home. Let their self-satisfied case studies moulder. Instead, read some fiction, stories to free up your mind, short books – not the old airport blockbusters. This should be a limbering-up exercise so that once you have taken your mind elsewhere it will have the space for thinking. Having effortlessly cleared the lumber room stuck in your mind, you can then let it open up and see what comes. Try and make it useful and thoughtful.
In your state of summer bliss, you chuck the lot out and install a simpler system. And you will look back at your summer, not with anxiety at thoughts unfulfilled, but with calm satisfaction. As it should be.
