Summer is the season of simple and timeless joys. She frolics like a happy child between innocent spring and melancholy autumn waiting for us to embrace her unbridled delight with life. It’s the season when we walk barefoot in the grass; we watch kids run through sprinklers and throw themselves with careless abandon onto Slip-and-Slides; and we wear straw hats, sun dresses, and sandals while eating a single scoop of vanilla ice cream in a wafer cone.

One summer many years ago when my boys were young, my older son and I wordlessly agreed to a daily ritual. After his younger brother fell asleep for his nap, we grabbed our sun hats and each other’s hands and walked out to the garden. No matter how much frustration or irritation had pock-mocked our morning, as soon as we stepped onto the stones that marked our garden’s edge, we exhaled more deeply and felt the tensions dissolve.

Away from computers, phones, and the mounting collection of “kid stuff” that was filling our house, we fell into an easy rhythm as we engaged in the simplest of tasks: weeding, watering, harvesting. The waterfall of words that normally tumbled from his six-year old lips slowed down, as if his thoughts were following the cadence of his actions. There was space to hear birdsong and the rush of the creek. There was time to bend down low and observe the honeybee drying her tattered wings in the heat of the midday sun.

After my son picked pockets full of snap peas, we walked back indoors, sat together on the wicker chair in the screened-in porch and marveled at the miracle of these delicious green treasures. “Better than candy,” he would say, as he thoroughly enjoyed the sweetness of these peas that we had planted together in early spring. So simple, and so complete. It was, without a doubt, the high point of each day.

The secret is in slowing down long enough to notice the simple miracles that surround us. It’s like that beautiful little poem, The Red Wheelbarrow, by William Carlos Williams:

so much depends

upon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

beside the white chickens.

Indeed, so much does depend on noticing these singular moments of life that can, when we take the time to see them, connect us to a profound sense of joy and gratitude. It can sometimes feel like a Herculean effort to peel ourselves away from the magnetic force of the computer and the things we have to do (the ever-growing and never-ending to-do list), but I would venture to say it’s an inarguable truth that the simple joys of summer will not be found in that virtual reality or in checking off items the list.

In this culture that exalts technology, achievement and efficiency to a godlike realm, pushing us into a frantic pace which exacerbates anxiety, we have to listen closely for the simple activities that invite us to slow down to a natural pace. These moments are medicine for the anxious mind; they’re what the soul longs for.

And summer abounds with these opportunities. It might be as simple as stretching out under a tree like a cat in the shade and allowing yourself to unwind in the late afternoon languid heat. It might be taking ten minutes in the middle of a workday to sit on a park bench, bite into a crunchy, red apple, and notice the shapes of the clouds as they billow across the sky. Do you remember, as a kid, finding dinosaurs and dogs hiding in the clouds? During this childlike season, we can become like children and remember that it’s the simple moments and the timeless tasks that inspire the most joy.