After the joys of summer have gone....

Well, as far away as it seemed back in gloriously early June, here we are once again at the Labour Day long weekend, which both unofficially and officially signals the end of the summer. Or the end of the summer as we know it and I (don't) feel fine, to paraphrase a certain musical voice from Athens, Georgia. 

Even though it's been a long time since the end of summer held its prior darker meaning in our lives, i.e. the dreaded loss of freedom that was the return to schooldays and homework, the end of summer still tends to draw wistful sighs from one and all, and a yearning to go back to the start again. It's not that different from how many feel on a Sunday afternoon and evening after a weekend of freedom, in their adult lives! 

Some of this is just conditioning and comes from deeply ingrained memories from our childhoods, I feel. As a kid growing up in church-dominated Ireland, for example, there was a (un)holy doom and gloom that clung to Sundays like white on rice, and almost nothing could shake it off. Even when we did have a long weekend or were on never-ending lazy summer holidays, with no school on Monday, there was still a blackness oozing out of every empty closed shop that was matched only by the color of the priest's robes at the front of the packed pews. 

I can still smell the hissing starchy steam of my mother's iron pressing on the ironing board on dark, wet Sunday afternoons of childhood, with nothing to rescue me from either gloomy Sunday or the looming Monday ahead. As distant as that reality has become today, the steam apparently has still not evaporated from my senses! Maybe I should simply let off some steam?!

Was there ever anything as desolate as grey, wet street corners in a small Irish town on a Sunday afternoon, we would ask. For young teenagers it felt like death itself and we were jealous of adults for once in our lives because they got to get up on Monday morning and escape the house and go off into town and see their work pals, while we got securely shuffled off to prison for another week of indoctrination and rigorously scheduled shuffling around from one (padded) cell to another. 

Imagine if we had known back then, that we were destined to live the same thing for the next 50-60 years?! For many, I guess that's exactly how it feels, and that's got to be one rough life, living and working just for Friday night and Saturday, and then the dread of Sunday evening or end of summer comes along and the stress levels start to rise again. But you know, even those of us who are lucky enough to love our jobs still carry part of that longing in us, which resurfaces on Labour Day or on occasional Sunday nights; the question is why?!  

As I said, certainly for an Irish schoolboy (or girl!), a lot of it is simply permanently etched into our souls and muscle memroies that Sunday was a day as boring, bleak and black as sin itself, and nothing could be done about it. For us adults, with all of our experience, we know that not to be the case even if we still get the Sunday blues occasionally, and you know, I think that just stems from our innate desire to be free. We are free, in so many interpretations of that word, but we are not free to just go off and walk around the lake on Monday after a nice breakfast in town. 

Much as we do love our job and our work, there is a building desire to be set free, particularly as the number of years left falls below the number of those that have already been lived, and that is probably entirely natural. To rub against the grain, and kick against the fray, to rebel, and refuse to go to the office on Monday morning, instead heading for the hills without a worry in the world and embracing freedom - it's a lovely thought - but we would probably get anxious by early afternoon. 

I often think it might only take a few days or at most weeks of kicking against the fray and playing hooky to remind us of precisely why work is so important in our lives. We derive so much more out of it than our salary, and that is often overlooked when we are facing a tough week ahead on a Sunday night, or are dreaming of never going back again. Last week I chatted with a guy who apparently had and has it all - retired by 52 and free as a bird - and when I pushed him for how he feels about it today, his answer surprised me. He wishes he hadn't -  retired - and feels that 52 was too young. What are you supposed to do when you don't have to go to school but all of your friends are incarcerated there?!

As precious as our weekends, and our holidays, and our summers truly are, we enjoy them all the more because we work the rest of the time, at least in part, to be able to afford and enjoy those precious free hours. To see life through the other side of the coin, from someone who is free to enjoy every day as a free man in Paris (evoking a certain billionaire entertainment mogul seen through the eyes of a legendary Canadian songstress) and who, well, seemed kind of bored, most definitely opened my eyes up to the "free"  life. 

Yes, if you have enough money to do anything/everything you want, then being free all year probably is a great experience. But even then, after a year or two, most of us would return to "what's the point?" Overall, we already have (close to) the right balance, because in the end nothing beats jumping out of bed to go off to do work that stimulates and challenges us, and that produces something that we believe in. That is the holy grail, when it compensates you by providing a lifestyle that is both comfortable and rewarding at the same time. 

So, on this gorgeous (again!) Sunday morning of Labour Day weekend, there are no blues on this street corner, or in this summer office, but rather a most definite sense of freedom that I can stay in bed a little later this Monday morning and Labour Day, and then when Tuesday morning rolls around and I am due back in the office for work, I am going to consider myself one of the lucky ones to be able to go do so. Summer might be (almost) over, but it's going to be an awesome Autumn, and I can't wait for that! The big question after Tuesday of course is whether we can still wear white?!