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July 19, 2025 
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Good morning. The popular notions of summer fun and the things we actually feel like doing can sometimes be at odds with each other.
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| María Jesús Contreras |
Open season
There’s a period before sunrise called civil twilight, when the sun is still below the horizon but it’s light enough to start your day. In high summer in New York City, light starts to peek around the edges of the shades at 5 a.m., scratching at the screen like a pet trying to get in: I’m here! Get up! Let’s go! It makes for a long day if you get up at this hour — around 15 hours if you’re keeping track, as I am, trying to squeeze as much juice out of the season as possible before it’s done.
A member of the anti-summer contingent recently groused to me that she hates this time of year, because she feels so much pressure to always be doing things, to fill her time with outdoor activities that would be impossible in colder months. She feels guilty saying “I’m just doing nothing” when asked about her weekend plans. How could she be so wasteful, squandering this brief period of light and warmth? Think of all the picnics and pool parties and breezy strolls she’ll regret not having undertaken come February!
She’s right — in the warmer months, there’s a tinge of accusation to our small talk. “What are you up to this summer?” seems to require a recitation of an action-packed agenda in response. If you have kids, the pressure to keep them properly occupied can set the season up as “a parenting Rorschach test,” as Hannah Seligson recently wrote in The Times. Someone once suggested to me that there’s no question that makes one feel more defensive than, “Any fun trips coming up?”
The socially acceptable definition of fun and the reality of what we actually experience as fun can often be quite different from each other. One person’s “beach barbecue” is another person’s “lying on the couch, reading, kind of dozing all afternoon.” Doing absolutely nothing today might be the most pleasant summer activity you can think of. You do not need to get up with the sun and pack your hours with berry picking and butterfly catching in order to have a dreamy summer day. (I did that only once, and I was so tired by lunch I could barely keep my eyes open.)
The true promise of summer, the one we’re all entitled to, is that feeling of lightness and openness, of our cares diminishing at least a little bit. Let no well-intentioned but ultimately irksome query about what you did this weekend keep you from doing, or not doing, whatever it takes to achieve this.
Trump Administration
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| Venezuelan migrants arriving in the country on Friday. Federico Parra/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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| Ari Aster Jonno Rattman for The New York Times |
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| Drake Emli Bendixen for The New York Times |
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| Robyn Hurder Vincent Tullo for The New York Times |
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