Summers With Goethe

Sidestepping study hall stupor

In winter the Florida sun attracts visitors. Now it is driving them away. My Naples neighborhood is emptying out, as many of the walkers, bikers, and dog lovers I chat with on breezy mornings head north, to cooler climes. Looking ahead, life here will be much quieter until the fall. But, because of a chance discovery I made as a high school sophomore, I’m ready for the quiet.

Quiet will be a big change. During “the season,” which runs from November to May, Mediterra, my community, thrums like an overbooked cruise ship. There are dances, dinners, wine tastings, club meetings, golf, tennis, and pickleball, supplemented by private parties and gatherings. A friendly vibe emphasizing fun fills the air, so that even introverts (like me) breathe it in and look like social butterflies.

However, when the season ends, it’s as if a fairy tale spell has been broken. Like mythical Brigadoon, high-octane Mediterra vanishes, leaving in its place a sleepy community sweltering under the summer sky. Spring here is like high summer in the northeast. And summer? The heat is so fierce that it turns a part-time paradise into a pretty purgatory. Those who remain pass the time inside in the A/C, venturing out mostly before sunrise or after sunset. Which brings me to that wisdom I encountered in high school.

Fifty-some years ago, I walked into afternoon study hall with no plan beyond passing the time—because really, that’s all study hall seemed good for. But on that day something had changed: the back of the room was newly decorated with posters, each featuring a quote from a famous person and a picture that added to the message. Many of the sayings were memorable, a few funny, but one stayed with me for life: “Talent is produced in solitude, character in the stream of life.”

The quote was attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. At that time I was obsessed with basketball. It seemed to me that Goethe understood how to get game long before the first slam dunk brought fans to their feet. If you want to excel at something, practice it over and over, and then keep going, even when your dedication looks to others like an unhealthy single mindedness. Goethe, a polymath, likely had his literary or scientific projects in mind when he wrote those words. But they made me think of shooting baskets in the twilight after the game had ended, everyone else had gone home, dinner was cooling, and my mom’s temper was heating up

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The second part of the quote, about character, gave the sentence balance and harmony. But it didn’t resonate with me at the time. That would come later. Goethe’s words provided room to grow into. They sit beneath my high school yearbook photo, and in my heart, available for inspiration.

Now that the season is over, I need it. Thanks to Goethe, instead of a “study hall summer,” I will apply myself to the talents I’d like to cultivate. I want to write better. Summer will be for writing more, reading deeply, and studying the greats, like Goethe. I’ve been learning Hebrew, French, and Yiddish on an app called Duolingo. Now I can give more time to those languages. And, because I haven’t changed that much from high school, I can work on my game, though now that game is tennis, not basketball. At the end of most days, when the sun is setting, I will practice my serve, hitting buckets of balls to imaginary opponents. While I won’t have the grandiose dreams that drove me as a kid—they are the privilege of horizonless youth—I still have a love of the game. And that’s enough.

Each season seems to end faster than the one before. But that’s true of the off-season, too. Soon enough my friends and neighbors will return, and wake Mediterra from its summer slumber. And yet, amid all the new season’s lightheartedness, there will be more serious moments, moments where someone needs a favor, a sympathetic ear, or a supporting shoulder. I want to be there for those moments because “…character {is produced} is the stream of life.”