SEASON’S FLEETING
The end of summer can mean a load of stress, from school illnesses to growing to-do lists,
We may have one last long weekend of summer ahead, but there’s a definite sense of purpose in the air. Or as someone I know described it, “a brutal awakening.”
September is here. Along with a feeling of anticipation, there is undeniable stress as we rev up for another school year or a quicker pace at work, or just fall life in general.
At least we’re not heading into September bemoaning the passing of the sunniest and most lovely summer ever. Nope. Did not happen.
Of course, any normal weather whining should absolutely pale in comparison to our ongoing concern for Texas and Louisiana victims of mass flooding, barely hanging on to their lives let alone their belongings; or those in Canada displaced by western wildfires.
They are battling both nature and human-made disasters at their most dangerous. Watching just one video of a courageous flood rescue in Houston — in the middle of such destruction, a flotilla of citizen watercraft setting out to pull people to safety — makes you both humble and hopeful.
I’ve been keeping track of September-themed stories that show up on my news feed. Some of them are scary and I don’t just mean a possible North Korea-provoked nuclear war. Although that still seems to be “on the table” according to the U.S. Tweeter-in-Chief.
Dr. Peter Lin, the medical expert on the CBC radio show Metro Morning, delivered a list this week of communicable diseases school kids are vulnerable to the minute they enter the school gates and even I, with no students to worry about, listened in horror.
Lin, calling schools a “swap-meet for germs” started with colds and viruses, briefly touched on hand, foot and mouth disease, stomach flu and diarrhea, threw in head lice, pink eye and ringworm, and rounded it off with mono.
Backpacks are apparently germ magnets. Maybe kids should change clothes when they come home from school, Lin said, and not put their backpacks on the table or bed.
Good luck teachers and parents. Head lice is eternal. And so is back-to-school stress.
One year, on the first day of school, one of my now grown children lay face down on the threshold of a Grade 1 classroom, pretty well at the teacher’s feet. Awkward.
September is a threshold month, as parents map their children’s extracurriculars, businesses plot how to survive the next quarter and all of us, tallying our to-do list, wonder how soon we’re going to get up to speed.
A lot of our stressing is done via our phones and computers — registering, communicating, flipping back and forth between chores that need to be done and the distractions of news — most of it upsetting.
I recommend a thought recently tweeted by Bloomberg View contributor Noah Smith: “15 years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet.”
This tweet went viral, which is in itself funny when you think of it.
I thought it was brilliant, although I still find it hard to choose between the internet and real life. Many times, of course, they are the same.
Both real life and internet life cause physical stress: last week, I needed a massage after sitting hunched way too long at the computer.
“Sitting is the new smoking,” said the young massage therapist who did wonders with my inflamed upper back.
“Yes, but standing is the new sitting,” I replied, pointing out new studies that show standing to work all day can be just as harmful.
That still leaves lying down and moving. We’re not out of options yet.
Everything in media and marketing is seasonal. In September, out go the imag- es of laughing stylish people enjoying barbecues on perfect patios, cocktails in hand. In come the slow cooker recipes.
All of it feels a bit arbitrary. Many people I know barbecue year round, although that won’t be us: as an extra symbolic summer kiss off (although summer isn’t officially over until Sept. 20), our gas barbecue spontaneously disintegrated this week as it heaved up its last batch of sausages. Well done, good and faithful charred food provider. What’s it been? At least 12 years.
September may be a time of stressful beginnings, but it is such a beautiful month. I always think of it as the month that sparks the most creativity.
The air is still warm, the light is fantastic and the possibilities of improving oneself seem limitless, from the middle school student vowing to do better in math to the excited senior enrolling in a continuing education course for the sole purpose of human enrichment.
On the digital news outlet Quartz, I came across a definition of creativity by Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of the Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania (a place that sounds almost mythical.)
“Creativity isn’t a singular personality trait,” Kaufman says. “It’s a way of being that requires being constantly open to spotting and engaging in new ideas and experiences, without the expectation that these experiences will lead to inspiration or immediate creative outcome.”
September can be stressful, but it can also be an entire month of new ideas and experiences.
Ask any first grader. All you have to do is cross the threshold. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson