Working While Summer Marches On

We here in the Northeast get to a point where summer just seems to march on, day after day. In the New York Metro area, humidity becomes an almost daily visitor. So much so that any respite of dry air elicits a small - sometimes a big - sigh of relief.

And so summer goes, as it marches on. Eventually it will hand the baton to fall. But we're not even close to that day yet.

Some folks, of course, manage the heat and humidity with a smile. Others (ahem) struggle to maintain our equanimity in the face of all this. Recalling charity as our first order of the day encourages us to forego our personal preferences for cooler, drier weather, and simply offer up this sometimes seemingly unbearable discomfort.

Given that many of us work indoors, and that most workplaces are air conditioned these days, it might help us non-lovers of heat and humidity to remember that some of us work outdoors in these conditions. If you drive to work, you might say a prayer for the guys (and gals) performing repair/construction work on the side of the road.  Commuters to Manhattan by public transport typically walk to the office upon reaching the final destination. Almost inevitably, there will be vendors on the street, workers with hard hats at one of the seemingly endless construction sights sights, homeless people waiting for handouts, to name a few. How about a prayer for them when you hit the cooled air of that building!

Ever wonder what folks did before air conditioning? One more step back: before electricity, meaning there weren't even fans to move the air around. How did they manage to get their work done back then when the heat and humidity descended on them?

Apparently, in the Southern parts where heat and humidity reign supreme much of the year, folks took to drinking sweet tea - a decidedly Southern concoction. It apparently helped/helps keep them attentive and moving (caffeine + sugar?) - although moving slowly was the de rigeur pace of Southern folks enveloped in their unique conditions. So there's something that can make heat and humidity in our neck of the woods perhaps a bit less oppressive?

These days, working from home, those hot humid commutes are mostly a memory. Still, somehow the outside conditions work their way into a home office. Is it simply looking out the window and knowing what's boiling up out there? Is it the occasional foray out of the air conditioned cocoon to attend to some domestic duty? Whatever it is, the oppressive summer heat somehow weighs heavy at time.

And this will bring us to what has come to be called the "summer doldrums." Is this something still spoken of these days? Once it was simply part of the march of summer, as it built its strength in July and continued hot and humid into August. Summer doldrums.

Doldrums means a state of stagnation or depression. Depression might be a bit too extreme when it comes to summer's blanket of heat, but stagnation likely captures the beast more realistically.

You can wind up somewhere between a languid inclination and outright state of torpor. 

In the end, these summer days simply present yet another challenge to us Catholic men at work. We don't just give in or give up. We first offer up any discomfort or suffering, and ideally do this for the Holy Souls. Indeed, if some descriptions of Purgatory are accurate, just the thought of what our brothers and sisters in the Church Suffering are undergoing should settle the matter right then and there. Nothing we experience can compare.

In addition to offering up, we can use this summer challenge, even in the case of the doldrums, as yet another gift from Our Lord to help us to grow closer to Him. By turning away from our own self and reaching out to Him in His Supreme Suffering, we can pare down our self-centeredness. We can advance in St. Paul's aspiration to take off the old man and put on the New - that is Christ. 

So as summer marches on, let's not miss our chance to accept, embrace, even love the crosses that it might bring us. How else can we become saints if we let slip these hot humid opportunities for sanctity?