Summert-i-i-i-i-me – Last Act

This may not be the last weekend of the summer, but it certainly feels that way. Most of the summer visitors have left, the weddings are all behind us now, and the festivals – returning after a two year absence – have come and gone. It is so hot and humid that we are actually looking forward to the imminent two weeks of fall before the winter rain (yes, we know that the rain will quickly follow, and we’re actually looking forward to that!).

The summer is slowly winding down, and winding up… and we are slowly returning to what used to be our usual routines. Chores around the house that have been put off for weeks and weeks are now the focus of our Saturdays, and weekends aren’t as stuffed with nail and hair appointments (did I mention the summer series of weddings?), or sequences of brunch, lunch, coffee, dinner, drinks with different groups of friends and cousins for quick catch-ups. My schedule no longer contains arrival and departure dates, and the names of my ‘local’ friends are slowly reappearing for some of our usual get-togethers, which are, as always, suspended during the busy summer.

It has been a good summer, a feast of good times and fresh fond memories, and I am grateful that I am leaving this table satisfied and full. And as things slowly return to some form of ‘normal’, I can’t help but wonder what our non-summer Lebanon will have in store for us. Don’t think of it as pessimism… perhaps it’s remnants of old habits, the little anxiety as the start of the school year approaches. Today, however, I want to focus on the other part; the equivalent of the brightness of brand new stationary, the smell of brand new text books, and the running pool of which of my friends will be in my section. What I am focusing on today is the excitement of the reset button, the end of the summer ushering in a new year full of new possibilities.

January 1st may get all the parties, but if you pay close attention, the real new year starts as the summer ends.

Endings & Beginnings

I am in England, oddly aware that this may be the last time I come for a while after 9 years of going back and forth relatively regularly to follow up different aspects of my PhD, which I have now come to polish off once and for all. While occupied by the thought that this rather long chapter in my academic career is coming to an end, I check myself into the dorm room that the my department has booked for me for my week’s stay on campus. As I walk in, it dawns on me – I am in a dorm again, in a single room on a floor with shared communal bathrooms. The last time I lived in such circumstances was at the very beginning of my university academic career, as a Freshman, exactly 20 years ago. My endings are mirroring the beginnings…

I make my way through a relatively quiet floor on a Sunday afternoon, and I notice that there are a few tangible differences. Mainly, there is no knot in my stomache at the anticipation of meeting any of my floor mates. I am quite certain that I’m a few years older, have been working for as long as they’ve been reading, and am centered by a sense that I can swallow them up with one gulp. What an interesting concept! Guess there are some advantages to age.

I suppose some of the other differences have been around for a while, but this ending vs. beginning contrast that the dorm launched helped me recognize them. For example, I no longer weigh out overall cost as I glean over the titillating book titles at the bookstore, being able to support my long-held belief that books are priceless with an account that can actually afford them. Alternatively, I am also no longer as easily enticed by titles and books that I feel will no longer add much more to others I have acquired, absorbed and used over the years. This is not a reflection of feeble indifference to “There is nothing left for me to learn”, quite the contrary; I find I am now more specific in my search to add to what I already know, rather than confirm it. This feeds into another discovery made recently, that my main concepts and outlook on life, no matter how idealistic, are still the same as the ones I formed when I was a young undergraduate. And if I were to be perfectly honest, I would admit that those are the concepts and outlooks that I would like to return to as fully as I was committed to back then, before the tosses and turns of life temporarily beat them out of me.

And finally, there is one part of this ending that mirrors the beginnings, though this one clearly has more to do with age than any academic journey per se: not unlike some of my restlessness as a late teen college student, I am somewhat disillusioned by what I see in the world around me. Whereas I certainly know more and have done more by now than at that point, the similarity is that I still feel things could be done differently. And no different than my state of mind 20 years ago, I’m raring to get out there and find out: how?

Have come full circle to an ending that is really just a beginning…