A Summer That Doesn’t Need to Sparkle
Recently, I read an article on Sarah Winters’ blog titled, Maybe This Summer Isn’t Meant to be Magical. Winters discusses the cultural pressure she feels every year to have a “magical, extraordinary summer.”
As an illustration of cultural pressure, she describes how many magazines feature articles such as “How to Have The Greatest Summer Ever” or similar thoughts. She feels pressured and stressed, as though she has to do something exceptional every summer.
She argues back against that and says that there’s a place for simply living your life without feeling compelled to do something Instagram-worthy. She suggests maybe, instead of being magical, this summer is “meant to be grounding. Restorative. Clarifying. Maybe this is the summer where you stop chasing something out there and start tuning into something in here.”
Cultural Pressure to Be Epic
There is cultural pressure for us to make just about everything in our lives epic, exceptional, and extreme.
The phrase ‘Go big or go home’ has been popularized in recent years. It encapsulates the idea that if you’re going to do anything at all, you need to do it exceptionally or don’t do it at all. It can’t just be simple, comfortable, enjoyable, or relaxing.
A Life Built for Likes
Much of this pressure is driven by social media and the need people feel to curate an image of their lives that is exceptional and worthy of envy.
We look at our friends’ curated images, and they all seem like they’re having exceptional, epic lives, and we feel like we need to keep up. It’s the modern digital version of keeping up with the Joneses.
I often see this in the hiking community. One can’t just write about having an enjoyable ordinary backpacking trip; every trip has to be exceptional and titled ‘epic’.
Frankly, I’m sick of that word. I hear it applied to just about everything, and it no longer holds any meaning.
Living a Life Worth Living—Without the Hype
Why isn’t it acceptable to enjoy the simple things in our lives, which make up most of our lives?
Mark Manson points out how we should cultivate “…the pleasures of simple friendship, creating something, helping a person in need, reading a good book, laughing with someone you care about. Sounds boring, doesn’t it? That’s because these things are ordinary. But maybe they’re ordinary for a reason: because they are what actually matters.”” The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life.
Things don’t have to be amazing, epic, or exceptional to be valuable and worth doing.
Buddhist Monk Haemin Sunim also points out that many of the things that bring us happiness are not epic. Rather, they are simple things, “…such as the sunlight in your room, the laughter of children, a loving embrace, the colors of autumn foliage, a stunning sunset, the soothing sounds of jazz music at night, or the triumph of your favorite sports team” When Things Don’t Go Your Way: Zen Wisdom for Difficult Times.
Life Doesn’t Need to be a Performance
When we buy into the lie that everything has to be epic, we turn our lives into performances instead of lived experiences.
But life isn’t a highlight reel—it’s a collection of ordinary moments strung together with care and attention. The more we try to manufacture greatness, the more we risk missing the beauty that is already before us.
Try this: Choose one simple thing this week—a quiet walk, a phone call, a good meal—and treat it as enough. No hashtags. No pressure. Just presence.
AI Note: I wrote this blog post myself, using my own words and thoughts for the initial draft. I used AI only to suggest headlines, section headings, and text improvements.
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