Today, the first day of summer, is a good day to talk about seasons. The concept of dividing time into seasons is a little weird.
After all, there is no appreciable difference between the weather on June 20 and June 21. Yet we go ahead and draw a big fat line on the calendar and say “this day is Spring” and “the next day is Summer”.
We also tend to divide entire lives into seasons. We label people as being youngsters, or middle age, or old folks, as though they are undergoing some sort of sudden molting or morphogenesis.
I am not sure that this is healthy. Every time we put someone in a box like that, we take a way a little of their individual humanity.
But if we must “seasonalize” people, the least we can do is let them choose their own preferred season. As for where I am in the seasons of my life, I’ve decided that today is the first day of my summer.