End of Summer Reflection: Living with Intention
The light of late August always makes me pause. The air shifts, evenings cool, and I find myself looking back on summer with gratitude and thoughtfulness. This is my end of summer reflection, where I focus on living with intention.
Part of the journey of Wild Nordic Roots was to explore this inner pull to live more authentically, more in tune to nature and the seasons, to reconnect with simple joys.
At the start of summer, I realised I wasn’t living in line with my values. My job looked great on paper but left me drained inside.
I re-read Mary Oliver’s famous poem, The Summer Day, most known for the lines:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
For me though, this poem is about what it is to feel a sense of purpose, fulfilment, at the end of the day.
After weeks (months even!) of inner conflict, I handed in my resignation. The very next day, the knot of tension in my stomach unravelled. I felt lighter, as though summer itself was shining through me with energy.
Summer became my season of asking big questions:
What do I really want?
How can I live in closer alignment with my values?
These questions are at the heart of this prompt, and perhaps they’ll resonate with you too.
End of summer reflection
For writing or artistic expression.
- What have you gained this summer? (This can be big or small, a new habit, a memory, a shift in perspective)
- Are you living in line with your values? (Make note of where you are, and where you’d like to shift)
- What seeds can you plant now (practical or symbolic) to prepare for autumn?
A poem for the season
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
From New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA
As summer fades into autumn, we can carry forward the clarity and light of this season, remembering that our one wild and precious life is always waiting for us to live it fully.
