What Kind of Vibe Does Summer Bring?

It is commonly believed that summer is the season that brings with it a sense of lightness and ease.

Sun, water, sand, play, company, and laughter — each on its own and all together — awaken in us the feeling that summer is the most carefree part of the year. It is as though life itself, along with us, changes into something lighter.

In summer, we wear lighter clothes, move more freely through the city, start casual conversations more easily, and eat simpler food. The days are longer, people seem more open, and life, at least on the surface, moves out of enclosed spaces and onto streets, terraces, beaches, and squares.

Everything seems simpler.

Summer seems to whisper to us: slow down, put on something light, get an ice cream, and do not take everything quite so seriously.

And yet, in recent years, I have found myself wondering more and more how much of that image of summer is truly mine, and how much of it has been carefully shaped from the outside.

We are surrounded on all sides by marketing campaigns that associate summer with drinks, clothes, technology, travel packages, and almost anything that can be fitted into an image of carefree living.

Over time, I have come to realise that marketing does not merely offer us products.

It also offers us a ready-made picture of what our summer should look like and how we should feel while it lasts.

That image no longer comes only from television screens, billboards, and magazine pages. It is constantly presented to us on social media as well, where it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish someone’s real life from an advertisement, or a spontaneous moment from a carefully designed performance.

We look at photographs of tanned, smiling people, flawlessly arranged beaches, spectacular sunsets, journeys, parties, and family harmony.

And more and more often, I have the impression that this endless sequence of images is not merely showing us summer.

Happiness is being performed before us.

Everything makes it seem as though summer has a prescribed dress code, a set design, and a compulsory smile.

Perhaps that is precisely where the problem begins.

A person no longer compares their life only with an advertisement for a product. They begin to compare their everyday, imperfect, and ever-changing life with carefully selected moments from the lives of others.

They compare other people’s smiles with their own silence.

Other people’s journeys with their own staying behind.

Other people’s sunsets with their own ordinary afternoon.

Although they know they are seeing only fragments, they sometimes allow those fragments to convince them that someone else’s life is fuller, richer, and happier than their own.

It is easy to fall into that trap. A few carefully chosen images are enough to make a person’s own day suddenly seem too ordinary, even though, until that moment, nothing had been missing from it.

Then summer, which should bring us relief, becomes yet another stage on which we feel the need to prove that we are living well.

It is not enough to feel comfortable.

It is not enough to rest.

It is not even enough simply to be present in our own day.

It is as though all of it must also look beautiful, interesting, and convincing enough to others.

And so I arrive at a question that has been returning to me more and more often: am I truly enjoying myself, or am I, at least partly, trying to look like someone who is enjoying himself?

I do not believe that summer joy, travel, socialising, and beautiful moments are false. On the contrary, I believe they are precious. There are days when the sea, music, laughter, and good company are exactly what we need.

But I believe less and less in an image of life in which they are the only acceptable face of summer.

Because my summer is not always only sunshine, laughter, and movement.

Sometimes it is silence.

Sometimes it is tiredness.

Sometimes it is the need to withdraw, to be alone with myself, and not to turn every moment into a scene intended for other people’s eyes.

And those were precisely the moments that helped me most to return to myself. There was not much in them that needed to be shown to others, but there was something worth hearing within myself.

That is why, today, I try not to measure the lightness of summer by the number of trips, photographs, and smiles I have shared with others, but by how well I have managed to remain in harmony with myself.

A true summer vibe does not always have to be spectacular. Sometimes it is enough for it to be ours.

And perhaps true lightness does not begin when everything looks good, but when I stop feeling the need to prove that I am doing well.