All Summer in a Day: Maximizing Every Moment
Seize your minutes in the sunshine: How Ray Bradbury’s science fiction short story taught me to surf waves rather than fight them — keep filling your glass
One crucial life lesson from a short story read in middle school
Stories change lives. A Ray Bradbury short story and the classroom discussion forever changed the way I balance and approach my life.
“All Summer in a Day,’’ rewired my pre-teen brain with a life lesson that helped me through every subsequent storm of life: deaths, divorce, break-ups, job loss, and crushing heartbreak. This single “way’’ eased every disaster from hurricanes to floods to 9/11 to war to recessions to corona and lockdown.
The heart of the story: One hour of sun, seven years of storms
Bradbury wrote a story imagining a colony on Venus. Written in 1954, he envisioned cloud-covered Venus as a place where it always rained.
In reality, Venus is super hot (it’s closer to the sun) but just go with it, our teacher told us: Imagine a world where it’s always stormy: where it rains every single day for seven straight years. Then, you get your hour in the sun.
I re-read the story just now (40-plus years later). The story describes a classroom of 9-year-olds living in a colony on Venus: none can remember the last time the sun shined on Venus (when they were 2). But Margot is different.
Margot was born on Earth and didn’t come to Venus until she was four, so Margot vividly remembers sunshine, longs for it and writes about it, and shares her memories with the class.
She loves and misses the sun so much that her family is planning to take a significant cut in annual earnings to return to Earth to recapture that light. They will get to escape the darkness of storms and live like humans again.
The other children envy her so much that they truly hate Margot. And children can be cruel and thoughtless.
Margot’s story describing what the sun is really like only heightens their resentment toward her, so her classmates lock her in a closet, and she misses the hour in the sun the rest of the class gets to enjoy. Bradbury writes:
“It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives. ‘It’s stopping, it’s stopping!’”
The rain stops, and the other kids get to drop what they’re doing to enjoy their hour in the sun, experiencing a joy they’d never known. Margot misses out.
Reinforcing lessons from life experiences, songs, (and the Bible)
“All Summer in a Day’’ hit me as soon as I heard it. I was born in Michigan, where the weather seems to change daily. Or hourly. Like the Venus in the story, Michigan is another place known for rough weather, including long grey winters and many cloudy days. Our summers and sunny days are stunning but seem too short.
Shades of gray feel more common than the joys of the sun. I made a vow after hearing that story that was reinforced by smaller stories picked up via life lessons, songs, and the Bible.
My version of that story? During a summer journalism camp in high school, two friends thought it would be funny to push a triple bunk bed in front of the bathroom door, trapping me inside for several hours. Suddenly, I was Margot.
Like Margot in the story, I pounded at first, but I quickly knew it wouldn’t help. I just said “fine’’ and followed the frames of my new narrative. I decided to wait, work with what I had and be ready for the change.
I sat on the bathroom tile, read a book, or maybe even napped, something to occupy my time. Go with the flow.
A few hours later, everything now tranquil, I pounded again. My friends (who had fallen asleep) felt bad for having fallen asleep and let me out and apologized. I’m still friends with both of them.
Young people live for the answers in a song
My childhood also included introductions to songs that reinforced the lessons I was learning. For example, the Byrds version of the Pete Seeger song, “Turn, Turn, Turn,’’ with a message from the Bible: the first eight verses of the third chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes:
To everything (turn, turn, turn). There is a season (turn, turn, turn) And a time to every purpose, under heaven. A time of love, a time of hate. A time of war, a time of peace. A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing.’’
The ultimate “go with the flow’’ song of that era was Jim Croce’s advice: “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger, And you don’t mess around with slim.’’
Around that same time, Billy Joel sang “Angry Young Man’’ with its key lyrics: “I once believed in causes too. I had my pointless point of view. And life went on no matter who was wrong or right.’’ Again, you work with what you can, change what you can, and don’t try to change things you can’t change.
One of my all-time favorite songs, “Crossroads’’ by Don McLean, advises:
“We’ve walked both sides of every street. Through all kinds of windy weather. But that was never our defeat. As long as we could walk together. So there’s no need for turning back. ’Cause all roads lead to where we stand. And I believe we’ll walk them all. No matter what we may have planned.’
Takeaway: Critical productivity lesson from “All Summer in a Day’’
The key, life-changing takeaway from reading Bradbury’s story: I learned to consider waste (like being locked in a closet) a sin and to make the most of every glorious moment we are given, to believe that everything happens for a reason and to make the most of every moment:
- To get outside when the sun is out. Work your schedule around the gifts you’ve been given. Enjoy that rare sunny day just as the classroom in “All Summer in a Day’’ did.
- Find something useful to do inside when the storms or dark skies (or pandemics) rage outside, pushing you inward. Margot could be seen as a victim for being locked in a closet — or the ultimate winner because she’d lived on Earth (where the sun shines regularly) and (unlike her classmates on Venus) she got to return to Earth.
I understand my many friends who protest or complain about whatever they are lacking or upset about at any given moment. It’s human. Instead of complaining about what I lack, I try to “work with the ingredients I have.’’
I grew up reading “Peanuts” comics where even the tragically imperfect Charlie Brown could find his place in the sun eventually.
If a threatening storm is raging outside, I say, “Good excuse to work inside.’’ If I get a moment in the sun, I change my schedule or find a way to take my laptop and sit on the deck or a spot where I can enjoy those rays while working outside.
For example, one recent spring Sunday, my weather app predicted four days of rain, so I vowed to work outside on gardening chores and outdoor walks until the rain started. It turned out the forecast was wrong, and we had four days of sunshine until the next storm hit. Fine, I worked with that too.
Four steps to following the frames of your overriding narrative
- You look at the most significant patterns (the size and direction of the waves or narrative patterns you are living with) and paint your picture within the lines of that frame.
- You try to make sure the wind is at your back (and not pelting your face).
- You try to do something useful living within the frames of the narrative you’re living in. I don’t fight God. I work with what I have. If it’s storming, that seems like a good time to work inside. If the weather is stunning, I find something to do in that glorious, beautiful day, and know it’s a gift.
- Caveat: Sometimes, it makes sense to follow those same patterns and narratives but do the opposite of the crowd: When the markets collapsed in March 2020, and the crowds were selling, we bought a good stock that fell far too low because of widespread panic (its value quickly doubled). If there’s a traffic jam on one road, take the way less traveled.
As my oldest friend says:
“While everyone else argues over whether the glass is half full or half empty, you just keep filling the glass.’’
