Not long now, in just two days’ time, we will be updating Instagram feed and upgrading Monday greetings with “Happy new month!” I am not sure if you paid any attention, but as we start the new week on Monday, we will turn another leaf in the 2016 calendar. This thought occurred to me a few days ago, and horrified I wondered where the last seven months had fled. Heading home that evening, I noticed for the first time, just how much quicker the magically long twilit hours of English summer evenings gave way to darkness. Only weeks ago, the cool blue skies of summer lingered into late night.

Whatever happened? Life. When? When we were “making other plans” – to borrow from John Lennon.

Why? I thought, I had made plans. I was going to take two short-haul holidays, visit nearby towns and cities over the weekends, discover the nooks and crannies of the country I had come to call my own in the last two decades but never truly explored. I was going to take hikes in country parks, have picnics by the lakeside, take long drives on languorous afternoons, visit rooftop gardens, open-air cinemas, cool pools on hot summer evenings. Forget Brexit, Trump, ISIS, I was going to make this my best summer yet.
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Yet, somehow, some way, all those larger than life plans fell by the way side after those heady days of May full of so much promise that the world feels like your own personal playground up until that moment, I look at the date in my diary and felt a shiver run down my spine. I had blinked and missed the last two months. The weekends I dreamt of spending a short-haul culture capitals or far-flung exotic beaches, the afternoons I hoped to spend driving down country lanes, the imagined evenings at rooftop bars – such stuff as dreams are made on had melted into thin air. I had pottered around through the weekends, slept through the afternoons and worked through the evenings. Before I knew it, life had happened.

What was meant to be my best summer yet is now almost over.

When I was living in Nigeria, I often found the “Happy new month!” greeting a little too exuberant, a little too optimistic, in fact ridiculously gratuitous. We know it is a new month, I’d think, why point out the obvious? Now months later, I am finally beginning to see the worth of this greeting. Let’s stop being cynical – we all need a reminder that time is fast running, and we are fast running out of time, lest we wake up one day, two months into summer and realise summer is well on its way out!
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If we had a gentle, even cheerful reminder on the first day of every month, would we be more conscious of another month gone and new one just about to start? Would we be making our new month’s resolutions and make the next 30 days count? Would we finally be writing that book, going on that cruise, planning that long-overdue family get-together? I believe, we would.

Human brain is wired in wonderful yet weird ways. We are prone to making mistakes, vowing to learn from them and yet continue to err over and over again. Hence, once a year at the end of December, we merrily list our New Year’s Resolutions and repeat them like personal mantras – “I will start going to they gym”, “I will stop buying coffee every morning and put that money into savings”, “I will call Mum every day”, “I will cut down on junk food and take away”- only to cast them away like ill-fitting clothes within the first three weeks of January. Fast forward twelve months, we follow the same cycle all over again.

Hence it is no wonder, I start the summer with grand designs and wake up two months later, designs still sand castles in the sky, wishing somehow, someone had poked me with a reminder, “Hey, it’s a new day, new week, new month!” So, next time someone greets you with that almost nauseatingly cheerful “Happy new month!”, just think: As life pulls the rug from under our feet minute by minute, and each passing moment is like a grain of sand in an hourglass which you will never get back, it may be the only reminder you need grab life by the hair and turn those dreams into memories.