Visits to the museum, nature hikes, travel to far-off destinations, long conversations with a friend, bike rides through the neighborhood, a day at the pool, hours between the covers of a good book….  They’re all wonderful summer activities, and I hope you’ll take advantage of the time and opportunity.

But here’s the thing—while summer break, particularly in this season of your life, may seem to be the right time to take up such things, it would be a mistake to think of them as merely “summer activities”—well, except maybe for the day at the pool.  To do so would be to make the same mistake that C.S. Lewis cautioned against in his sermon, Learning in Wartime, in which he said of those who claimed that scholarly pursuits were not appropriate while war was going on:

“If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.  We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life.’  Life has never been normal.”

In other words, we must not wait for ideal conditions to spend time on good things.  In Lewis’ time, it was the mistake in thinking wartime uniquely ill-suited to higher activities; in our time, it is the mistake in thinking that summer—or some other special situation or season—is the only suitable time for them.

Beholding beauty, contemplating truth, and doing good have no proper season.  They are pursuits for all times and all circumstances.

And this is a good thing—because summer will fly by.  As Shakespeare tells us, “summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”  It will be over before you know it.  And the ideal conditions—long days, free time, warm, sunny weather—will all fade in turn.  Will you then stop: traveling, reading, hiking, conversing, visiting simply because those things are, to your mind, now “out of season”?  I hope not.

Enjoy your summer.  Spend time on good things.  And then resolve to continue them even after you return to school and to “normal life.”  After all, “[l]ife has never been normal.”

Have a wonderful day.