Mid-July. In my part of the world (northeastern Oklahoma) I can find little to like about mid-summer.
The list of what I don’t like is long: heat, humidity, mosquitoes, heat, humidity, mosquitoes, heat, humidity, mosquitoes, heat, humidity … Okay. So the list isn’t all that long, but it seems endless when it is repeated day after day after day.

Today I am meditating on something that John A. Murray says in The Quotable Nature Lover, The Nature Conservancy:Lyons Press, 1999. The quote is: “What the seasons have taught me over the last forty-four years is that you must embrace the changes of this world.”

It seems to me that nature is the greatest teacher of change. Unless you live in the tropics, where the only real change is when the sun is up or has set, you encounter constant seasonal changes. And people seem to get used to change, and even welcome those seasonal changes. It’s harder to get used to change in our lives.

Somehow we struggle through another cold winter, embrace another spring rainstorm, endure summer heat, and rejoice in the cool breezes of fall. Depending on where you live, each of us endures degrees of seasonal change. Some years are worse than others. Always, we have the reassurance that it won’t always be like it is today. The weather – and the season – WILL change.

But in the long run, I’m convinced that we can endure the change of the seasons because it brings something different into our lives. Humans struggle with boredom, and the seasonal changes bring us something new. Instead of day after day of the same old weather, we get something different; change in wind direction, change in temperature, change in the angle of the light and change in  the actual hours of day and night.
 
Over time, I believe people become comfortable with those daily and seasonal changes. The routine changes assure us that all is well.

So, here’s to heat. It won’t be like this in another three months. Really.