One July afternoon, I sat under the breeze of an air conditioner, sipping an iced americano and looking out the window. Heat shimmered off the asphalt, and everyone walking by kept their heads down, as if by agreement. A thought drifted in: maybe we’re so busy enduring summer that we miss what summer is actually doing.
Summer isn’t a season to “put up with”
Summers in Korea are brutal. According to the national weather service, the average August high in Seoul climbs past 30°C, and the number of tropical nights (when the low stays above 25°C) has risen steadily since the 2010s. On days when the felt temperature tops 40°C, stepping outside becomes a decision you have to brace yourself for.
So we treat summer as something to survive. We wait for it to pass, we long for autumn, and social feeds overflow with “I wish it were already fall.”
But hold on.
Try to recall the conversations you had in summer, the first taste of something, the smell that brushed past your nose. I remember them. Summer pushes the senses to their extreme. That edge, that intensity, is what makes us feel alive.
What grows sharper in the heat
A few summers ago, I went down to the Han River late at night with a friend. We sat by the water, where the day’s heat hadn’t quite cooled, drinking convenience-store beer and passing a few hours with no plan at all. The talk was nothing special. A book one of us had just read, the songs we were listening to, and that familiar question: “why are we living like this, anyway.”
And yet that night is still vivid.
Psychologists call this the peak-end rule. We engrave the most intense moment and the final moment of an experience into memory. The midday heat, the chill of an air-conditioned room, the smell of earth after an evening shower — these sensations leave summer’s memories darker and deeper than those of other seasons.
Summer carves memory.
When the body slows, thought deepens
Ask office workers about lunch in summer and an amusing pattern emerges. Most head for the company cafeteria or a convenience store instead of going out. Movement shrinks. And in that stillness, thoughts unexpectedly multiply.
It happened to me too. On lunch breaks too hot to go anywhere, I spent more time sitting alone by a window, reading or simply staring into space. At first it felt like wasted time. But as those hours piled up, my thoughts started to settle instead.
When the body slows, thoughts have nowhere to run. The heat is a kind of enforced slowness. It gets harder to pretend you’re busy.
What only summer can give
Honestly, I don’t like summer. I can’t stand the heat, I’m weak against humidity, and mosquitoes love me.
And still, when summer ends, I feel oddly wistful.
That’s because there are things only summer gives.
- A plastic chair in front of a convenience store at 10 p.m., inside the heat. That defenseless feeling.
- The dark clouds just before a downpour. That dramatic tension.
- The first bite of watermelon. Out of season, the taste isn’t the same.
- The smell of the sea. A summer sea and an autumn sea give off quite different scents.
No other season can imitate these. They can only be met inside summer, within that season itself.
This summer, let’s feel it properly once more
This summer I made one resolution. Before reaching for the AC remote, to feel the heat as it is for a moment. Before fleeing the discomfort, to listen to what that discomfort is trying to say.
Instead of rushing summer along, what if we sat outside late at night, just for one day? Catching a shower once without an umbrella, eating ice cream for no particular reason. They seem trivial, but those are the moments we end up remembering.
Summer passes in the end. But a summer lived properly doesn’t fade so easily.