The end of summer is a time of huge transition. I find it one of the most difficult times of the year, and I am wondering why. I think it has to do with the pictures I put in my brain—around May—of what the next few months will be, need to be, about: an expurgation of laughter, good times, catching up, relaxation and reconnecting with whatever has been built up by the stress, tension, worry, lack of sleep and perpetual on-the-go life I lead before the summer hits. It is as if I construct an island of respite called "Summer."

Of course, pictures in the brain are ideals, or what in psychology are called "archetypes." They are not real. What is real, however, is how we engage with, and in, the process of living with something, pull meaning from it and thus learn from it. And so I think for many of us, we set up summer to be something it cannot be, and as it comes to an end—or as normal life resumes—we find the gap between the ideal and the real to be gaping and thus difficult to face.

In my home, I have a young man who is about to start high school. Like millions before him, he is nervous about what the immediate future will be like, and this summer he has really seemed to want to put the future on hold as if it might never end and eighth grade will groundhog itself for him when he wakes up. My excitement for him and these next years ahead is only partly successful as a soothing ointment for him, for I know, as he knows only too well, it will be his experience of what happens, and his engagement with what happens, that will be the thing that really helps him move into his new reality.

And it is this "moving into something" that has me most excited. Like moving into a new home really requires a deep consciousness about what moving into the new home means as well as the actual move itself, the moving into summer and the moving from summer into the next part of the year—and with it, the next part of life and the future—requires us to engage and embrace the reality of this transition. Again, I find, a metaphor about the home is helping me experience my life in its fullest way.

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