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Summertime Sadness
Janis Joplin sang that during summertime, “living is easy.” It could be, indeed. The weather warms up, the rivers and beaches invite us to bathe, and the body relaxes. But all this is irrelevant if we don’t adopt a philosophy of life that allows us to take the time to enjoy it.
Summer is the time of year that should really be wonderful, as that time when we can later count how many of them we have lived, as if life is encapsulated in this small piece of time with which we associate the true joy of living.
But I know I was very spoiled during the two summers of my life, and this idea has influenced me throughout life. In the summer of 2009 — when I was 18, I went from festival to festival, running around Portugal by train, meeting people, and flirting here and there.
And definitely the best summer of my life, the one in 2016 when at the age of 25 (another beautiful age), I traveled around Italy, and as we say in Portugal, I had “energy to give and sell,” I had adopted a vegan philosophy of life that made me honestly happy (it’s good to hold on to something you believe in), I slept on beaches, I also went to a festival, and even though I worked taking care of a 3-year-old girl, I spent the days with her on the beach giving thanks to the universe for diving into the Mediterranean sea daily.
