After the Summer

There are often a lot of expectations of Summer; a good time, a holiday perhaps. Our personal and even our collective dreams may be touched. 2012 was the Olympian Summer; there was a hoped for transformation in the way people treated each other. At times it did happen. And it has happened before in different ways. It was before my time but in 1967 there was the Californian Summer of Love - a celebrated dream of a future free of conflict where people could live and love more freely.

On a personal level we might approach the Autumn with hope but wonder whether it can be kept going. As we feel the bite in the air we might question ourselves. Was the Summer - that season that had 'all too short a stay', just a dream? Will we be able to sustain ourselves as time circles on again? Will certain problems we might have wanted to wish away reassert themselves? What can be done? 

As the nights draw in there is another kind of intimacy where thought, recollection and even our dreams can keep alive a certain promise, at least on the personal level. The work of talking and listening begins again in that unique relationship we call therapy. As it takes its time, we sense what changes in us, what resists and what might endure as the seasons change.