Beat the Heat

It's summer time, time to beat the heat by lounging pool or river or seaside and I'm all for it.  I'd rather beat the heat than hide from it.  I really dislike staying inside air conditioned buildings all day, running from one cool place to another like the sun will gobble me up if I linger outside too long.

I was about 10 years old when we got a single box air conditioner for our home.  We could only cool one room and my parents chose their bedroom.  What I saw from the addition of this small thing was a total shift in our summer experience.  That bedroom became the center of the world.  We moved the TV in there, my brother's Nintendo soon followed.  People started taking their meals and phone calls in there.  Those wild days of summer freedom, picking berries, roaming woods, playing creeks or splashing in our kiddie pool, or even just spraying each other with water bottles, were over because we all stayed close to this little box that kept the heat away. 

I think I'd rather acclimate, be a little uncomfortable from time to time, but wild and free enjoying the whole wide summer world, than comfortably imprisoned.  I'd rather take a risk and face unpleasant things and hard times than give up my freedom for a false sense of comfort.  Do you know what happened after a few summers with that little a/c unit?  It broke.  And it suddenly became very clear that we were fully dependent on this thing that hadn't been a part of our lives for very long.  We couldn't handle the heat anymore.   We were poor, but my parents scraped together all the money they could find, and this time bought Two used units so we could cool the whole house.  And the dependency grew.  

It was a very early and critical lesson for me: be wary of anything that offers comfort in exchange for freedom, even if it claims to only be temporary.  Freedom, once surrendered is rarely given back and dependence on (addiction to) anything is the greatest thief of freedom that exists.  We've made a difficult decision this summer.  It's difficult because we're so dependent, but in the last year that we've had the internet in our home I've noticed a total dynamic shift in the way our family communicates with and relates to each other.  

What we have now is a group of people who isolate themselves with a screen from the time they wake up until the time I yell at them for the fifth time to turn their screens off and go to bed.  And sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and the internet is back on again, and like a proper junkie, someone is sneaking a fix.  I hate it and I hate how quickly they've (we've) become so attached/dependent/addicted.  So, as of now, the internet is gone for the rest of summer.  I'll pop by the library to upload posts, but at home, we're just going to get back out into the world and the woods, splash around in the pool or go down to the river and be with the real people.  We're going to make time for meals with friends and summer holidays--both real and recently imagined--with extended family and enjoy life for a bit.  In short, we're taking our summer back and in the process we're going to beat the heat.