I live in the South. It’s hot. Because it’s late July.
At this time of year, I cease to be ‘outdoorsy’. I very much become ‘indoorsy’. My air-conditioned existence is punctuated by brief sun-seared sprints between ‘boxes of cool’.
I wake up a medium-sized box of cool. I leave the medium cool box, scurry out in the driveway to a smaller box of (initially very hot but then quickly) cool. I ride in the small cool box to a much larger cool box where I can buy food to bring home in my small cool box, to my medium-sized cool box, where I then stay most of the time.
Once in a while, I take my small cool box to a larger cool box where I watch a movie. Or to a medium cool box where I voluntarily choose to use machines to get fit and sweaty even though it is still a cool box.
After the sun has gone down, sometimes I venture to the outer porch of the medium cool box, so that I can breathe the native air…the not-quite-so-hot evening air that surrounds my boxes.
I remember it is still July, and I retreat to my cool box until approximately October.
I am very mindful this week that I chose to live in this place, where it’s not a surprise that it’s hot. It’s hotter than it used to be, but it’s always been hot in July and August. My home is prepared for it. I am lucky.
This week, I am thinking of all the Europeans who did not choose to live in heat, and yet here it is for them: unprecedented and in some cases, lethal. And I’m thinking of all those across the globe and U.S. who can’t buy or afford to run an AC unit.
Those folks don’t have cool boxes to live in, sleep in, drive in, or shop in. I sincerely hope we can both remedy the relentless march of hotter summers, and also provide more people with air-conditioned relief.