Remember that feeling? The last days of school, walking home with nothing in your backpack but snacks, crumpled papers and a half-signed yearbook. The lazy summer stretching out in front of you, an endless string of unhurried moments. I can still feel it… The gorgeous way everything just stopped to make room for the rest and ease of summer. 

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Now, at 47, summer feels different. (To be fair, most things feel different). Where I once had that sweet, spacious, lazy feeling, I find a saltier sense of anticipation infused with adult responsibility, a deep appreciation for rest, and a tinge of angst. 

I wonder, dear reader, how this summer feels for you… 

Maybe you’re facing (another) summer without someone you love. 

Maybe you’re preparing for an empty nest as your teen heads off to college. 

Maybe you’re in a time of ease where things feel peaceful and restorative.

Maybe you're heading into your first summer with a diagnosis that’s hard to carry. 

Maybe you’re retired and living in a sort of perpetual state of summer with nothing but open roads ahead. 

Maybe you’re just switching from the work/school hustle to the work/camp shuffle, with an added yearning to create magical summer memories for your people (campfires, s’mores, twinkle lights, swimming pools).

Maybe languishing has been your steady companion for a while now, and your summer day feels just like any other day, only more humid.

However you’re experiencing it, summer is here. In the words of Frederick Buechner:  “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” 

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” 

“A bit heavy for a summer newsletter,” you say? Fair. But stay with me.

Here is the world

By the time we reach midlife, we know that life can be at once devastatingly painful, surprisingly joy-filled and tediously mundane. In its own way, this summer is also likely to be both too much and not enough, energizing and exhausting, beautiful and difficult. 

“Reality is paradoxical,” says Richard Rohr. “If we’re honest, everything is a clash of contradictions, and there is nothing on this created earth that is not a mixture at the same time of good and bad, helpful and unhelpful, endearing and maddening, living and dying.” 

While our lives are made up of paradoxical experiences, feelings, expectations and hopes all nestled together, we live in a culture that largely denies that. It looks down on uncertainty, nuance and complexity, favouring instead uniformity, certainty and immovability. It rewards the swift rejection of anything that seems to contradict or conflict with our ideas. 

We see this in the deep polarization and steep decline in meaningful, respectful conversation among people with differing viewpoints. Across digital media, I see steady streams of stories yelling about how the world (or at least humanity) is coming to an end — and how clear it is who’s to blame. Of course, there are reasoned and thoughtful voices, too, but they are often drowned out by the rushing current of shocking and polarizing content. 

We also see it in the pull of constant distraction. Reel after reel of shiny people offering easy diversions from the messiness of our real lives; promising the secret to an idyllic summer and the elusive magic of youth. They perpetuate what British psychologist Robert Holden calls destination addiction, “a preoccupation with the idea that happiness is somewhere else.” They work to keep us convinced that while happiness is never right where we are, it is most assuredly just on the other side of this trip, that renovation or one more purchase. 

In a culture like this, it can be difficult to live right in the here and now, inhabiting the lives we actually have. 

Inhabiting our imperfect, midlife summer 

Inhabit (verb)

/inˈhabət/  

To live in or be present in a place or environment

To occupy as a place of settled residence or habitat

One of the invitations of life’s second half* is to expand; to make room within ourselves to accept and welcome all the messy and paradoxical parts of ourselves and of the world. This involves growing pains, and enduring the discomfort of holding our own complexities, contradictions and inconsistencies. This work of expanding helps us become more present in our lives, and more compassionate toward ourselves and others.

Imagine what it would feel like to accept every part of the summer (and life) you actually have? Not the one “out there” in the future, in the reels or in your head... the one you’re living right now. 
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Make room

Some of us find it hard to make room for the harder emotions and experiences in life - like grief, sadness or rage. Others of us find it really difficult to make room for ease, joy or delight in our days - especially if life has felt like a tough slog for a long time. Sometimes it just feels safer not to get our hopes up. What do you find hardest to welcome? Is it the joy or the pain? Is it the struggle or the ease? Consider how you might make just a bit more room for that.

Imagine how it would feel if you could make room this summer for:

the hard, the easy and the tedious;

the confusing, the clear and the unknowable;

joy, pain and ambivalence;

confidence and uncertainty;

loneliness and comfort;

grief and joy;

significance and finitude;

failure and success.

As your own beautiful, imperfect summer begins, consider this your official invitation to make room for all of it; and to hold it with a tenderness you might not have afforded yourself when those summer days felt endless.
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Here at InHabit, through the summer months and beyond, we’ll be exploring the many facets of what it means to live well in our second half of life.

We won’t try to sell you “5 days to your best beach body,” or tell you to hustle harder when you’re exhausted (rest, please). Neither will we suggest that hope is futile in a messy world. I’m an advocate at heart and know just how gritty and powerful hope is, and how slow - and possible - growth and transformation can be.

Amidst the noise of distraction and division, we’ll be right here, working to bring you honest, thoughtful, hopeful and generative conversations about inhabiting the lives we actually have.

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_{*You may notice we often use the terms midlife and second half of life interchangeably. Both terms have a chronological meaning and typically refer to the time in life that begins in our 40s. The term second half of life is also a psychological concept coined by psychiatrist Carl Jung. According to Jung, after a more egocentric first half of life marked by external pursuits and identity-building, the second half of life is a period of significant inward exploration. In our second half, we are tasked with rigorous self-examination and an inward journey toward meaning and wholeness.}