No matter the weather, with Victoria Day behind us, it's now summer across Canada.
While most of the year is about hustle, bustle and finding efficiencies for the sake of doing things with greater speed and less care, the summer provides us an opportunity to slow down and enjoy a more leisurely pace.
It's the season of lounging, of doing nothing while you do something, because nine or 10 months of being active calls for a little me time of basking in the sunlight after lathering up enough sunblock to turn my skin to mush.
There are countless ways to be both active and inactive throughout the summer, and while it's probably appropriate and healthy to mix things up, I find myself doing much more relaxing than engaging.
And I'm apparently a terrible example with my desire to elevate my feet in the backyard and read a book.
You may have heard this week that Canada's children are inactive. The situation is serious, heck, it's at Defcon 1. The sky is falling on children across the country and this report says they're too slow and too oblivious to cope.
The only country we hands down beat with our D minus grade was Scotland, whose kids were the only ones who flat out failed with an F. That's because drinking Irn Bru, similar to a mix of Red Bull and Mountain Dew, is considered exercise in the Highlands.
Canada's low activity figures, which include about 9.6 hours of sedentary behavior each day for teens, sounds both unreasonably low and mysteriously attractive.
I'm probably a bad example. I'd rather golf than play soccer or read a book over running a marathon. Thankfully I keep as much distance as possible between Canada's impressionable youth and myself. I'm not suggesting anyone look to me with a curious eye seeking guidance. They'll find no guidance, no model to live by.
I enjoy slowing things down, chatting on a deck with a cool drink, touring a vineyard, washing my car, sitting around the fire. I prefer activities at the tortoise's pace rather than the hare's.
In a twist, the report noted the hustle, the bustle and the desire for efficiency may be partially to blame, as our society prizes doing more with less, granting us every opportunity to decide to be stagnant.
We just need to be busy, even when life slows down and there is less on our plate. We need to find activity within the inactivity. We need to be doing something even when we're doing nothing. That's what summer is for.
