Not the best summer

In Dahab in July, it is easy to spot the people who are keeping score.

They hold the phone up at the water before they look at it. They compare this reef with the one last year, this guesthouse with the one a friend posted, this sunset with a better one from somewhere else. By the end of the evening, the trip has a ranking, and it is usually not first.

The ones who seem to be having the better time are not doing anything special. They are simply in it.

What we remember, looking back, is rarely the moment that scored highest. It is the moment something shifted. We learnt to swim properly, or a quiet friend finally talked, or we helped someone get somewhere they were trying to go. Those moments do not repeat, because we are not the same people the second time.

The same pressure follows us into work. A launch has to be the biggest yet. A campaign has to beat the last one. A shop window has to outdo the shop next door. Once that is the standard, the work shrinks to whatever can be measured against something else, and the useful question, what can this actually do for the person it is for, gets crowded out by a scoreboard.

Comparing turns a participant into a commentator. It puts a little glass wall between us and the thing we are doing.

This summer will probably not be the best one. It does not need to be. It is still a summer, and still ours to spend, and that is enough of a reason to show up for it.