The end of the summer.

Many people question what the end of summer may mean. The end of an era of relaxation? The dawn of a new stick season? Or the letter ‘r’?

The end of the summer can mean different things for different people.

For some, it’s the end of time with family. After flying across the globe to meet the people you love, this might be the time you say goodbye. And the time when you have more than 12 hours to yourself in a flying metal tin can. Although, if you haven’t got a window seat, the entertainment really has gotten better lately (definitely not personal experience). I’ve seen people play 2048 for hours on end on the flight and I think we’ve peaked.

On the other hand, this could be the time you realize that maybe some separation isn’t such a bad thing. Again, not personal experience, but maybe you and the people you thought you knew have grown sideways. And in most dimensions, that means you’ve grown apart. It is a tragedy of life that the people you grow up with are the ones you make life plans with for the future — that you’ll have houses next to each other, with secret tunnels connecting them so you can meet anytime — but once you’re all grown up in the future, you’re lucky if they are even a part of your life.

Summers are as bittersweet as the mojitos that fill them — they’re refreshing at first, but once you leave them be for a while, all you’re left with is a watered down lemon rind. Fall, on the other hand, is a pumpkin spice latte — it’s creamy at first and only seems to get spicier at the end.

Of course, fall brings with it its own set of turbulences. Gone are the summer breezes that lull you with their warmth, replaced by that perfectly uncomfortable weather that’s too chilly in the shade and too sticky in the sun. That false sense of comfort and relaxation? Replaced by hand-wringing hair-greying body-caffeinating stress of the new term. It might not be that bad for most people, but there’s no denying that fall is not summer, by a long mile — 3 months to be exact (comparable in c=1 God-given units).

There’s a place for summer and that is between spring and fall. But metaphorically, it’s between the rebirth and the death — I’ll let you think of what that could mean in your life. Regardless of how you spent your summer, there was something in your life born before it — whether that was a research opportunity, a job, a plane ticket, or hope — and at the end of the summer, there was something that died (hopefully, metaphorically). But what that leaves us with is a period that’s full of memories. I tried to find a statistic about this, but all I got from Google Gemini was 45% of Americans call fall their favorite season and Christmas is a special and symbolic season. So maybe summer doesn’t mean all that much to you. But it could. One thing I’ve realized is that too much of life feels like it’s been spent in an amorphous blur, and anything you can do to carve out a semblance of a shape makes your life just that much more meaningful — at least from a distance.

All this to say: the summer might be coming to an end, but try to find something that lives on, something to carry forward. Find something that makes you feel the summer, makes you remember it, makes you know it as a part of your life. That way you’ll be one less person who goes, “Summer? I hardly know her!” — because now, you actually do.