It’s the end of summer — but why not have an endless summer?
By Laura Schreffler
I don’t know about you, but summertime makes me feel like a big kid. The thought of being cooped up in an office while the sun is shining, the air is warm and the beach is near makes me die a little inside. There are sandcastles to be made, surfers to be stared at and shenanigans to be had! I may be of a marrying age, but do I really have to grow up and settle down? What rulebook says so?
I’ve come to realize that there’s a big difference between immaturity and childishness. Just because I find Beavis & Butthead like, hehe, cool dude, doesn’t mean that I’m not ready to settle down. Just because I like to pepper my conversation with ‘that’s what she said’ doesn’t mean that I’m still living like a teenager: I just happen to have a puerile sense of humor and happen to like men that do too. To each her own, right?
An endless summer indicates that we don’t aspire to be or do anything more than we already are, that we go with the flow and ride with the tide and let life take us where it may. An endless summer indicates a lack of responsibility, an inability to grow up. It’s widely considered that people like me, who enjoy the thought of and endless summer, have a Peter Pan complex.
Hearing people talk about Labor Day as a last hurrah — a farewell to sultry, summer living while miserably pouting about heading back to the daily grind — depresses me. Why shouldn’t every day be a beach?
Can’t there be a happy medium? Can’t we enjoy ourselves and be happy with our lives and still act like adults? You’re as young as you feel, so why do we force ourselves to feel that being a grown-up means we can’t still be having fun, albeit responsibly? Why does settling down with ‘the one’ sound so final? ‘The one’ should be whomever is right for you, even if that should mean ‘the one’ you’re just going to have fun with forever.
I am the grasshopper who sang all summer – and I’m going to be the grasshopper who sings all fall, winter and spring, too. Aesop said, ‘It is wise to worry about tomorrow today’, and he’s right. But when it comes to both life and love, worrying won’t stop the inevitable from occurring. So do as you please, but I’m going to live my life as if it were an endless summer — because this grasshopper doesn’t see anything wrong with refusing to completely grow up — or dating men who think like I do.
Hang ten, my friends… and do what makes YOU happy!
