Ah, summer.

Better yet, summer without having to work.

You know, sort of like our children’s educators, those whose chosen profession comes with a pretty darn good pension plan and a couple months off during the best weather the Canadian climate serves up.

It’s enough to make the rest of the working class a tad, uh, jealous.

Those left to slug it out in the stifling heat or sweater-wearing (go figure!) air-conditioned cubicle.

Who said life was fair?

No sir, Gandhi or somebody of his ilk says life is pain, and we’d best embrace that cold, hard fact and move on.

But just like criminals on parole, we get our days in the sun.

We get our holidays, albeit abbreviated versions of the ones afforded our children and their teachers.

And nothing messes up normal life as beautifully as a vacation, when our routines are thrown out the window.

Sleeping in, staying up late and liberally lounging around without the slightest hint of productivity.

In a time-is-money world of efficiency, it can be downright counterintuitive to our natural inclination to burden our lives with activity.

But there is something to be said for “down time,” unplugging and untangling ourselves from the tentacles of busyness and our stressed out, hurried, scheduled-to-death existence.

It would appear, though, that both extremes lead to a rich and happy life.

As parents, we can only imagine what our hectic lives will be like in a few years.

When the children have grown, no longer to hear the everyday sound of their voices (albeit often fighting with each other, as siblings do) once they’ve left home.

We also think of the fate of the elderly, life’s twilight years often marked by long periods of solitude and inactivity as life literally winds down like a clock.

Life is incredibly short, and we’d do best to enjoy ourselves through all its phases.

From the carefree years of childhood, to the tenuous teenaged years and early adulthood. From the middle years, to life’s late stages that lead us to the final curtain call.

During the long years of employment, we live with the hope of vacation time as a reward for the endless hours, the best years of our lives, really, with which we must earn a living by the sweat of our brow.

Yet enjoying life as it comes, even making the best of our work-related obligations, helps ensure that the time between vacations does not feel like an eternity.