Summer kitchen top

When the season changes, we change the way we dress, the way we engage socially, and the way we eat. In the summer (if there is a summer, which is not guaranteed in Ireland), I eat more fruit and I'm more likely to have a nice glass of wine in the evening. It goes without saying, then, that I would think differently then too.

At the extreme end of the spectrum, there is Seasonal Adjustment Disorder, or whatever they call it; but, at the quieter end , in a more subtle way, all of us are affected in how we think, in our conclusions about the big questions in life, by the hue of the season. Is it raining relentlessly? Is there sun when there ought to be rain? Is everything darkness and shadow when our bodies are desperate for light? Well, it's a sure thing that the way we interpret the world will carry the stamp of our response to the weather.

Heidegger makes much of our historical and cultural embeddedness. We're thrown into a time and context, so we can't ever have an all-embracing rational understanding of things. Well, we're thrown into the season too; also into a condition of health. I suspect that a great part of the wisdom of the world's great thinkers was born in response to the vagaries of weather systems, digestive systems, pathological conditions, sudden heaves of optimism or pessimism, unexpected warm or cold fronts, eruptions of the bowel, agitation of the brain, wet spells and dry spells, and so on.

What, I wonder, has brought out this thought in me?