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Halloween decorations in July are training us to skip the present. Here's the science of savoring and why this imperfect summer is worth receiving.

HOW TO SAVOR THE REST OF SUMMER

The back to school supplies are already being pushed aside for Halloween decorations at my local store. In July.

I know I'm not alone in finding this mildly unhinged. And every year I have the same reaction: can we please just be where we are for five minutes before we're asked to be somewhere else?

But this year instead of just being annoyed I got curious. Why does this keep happening? And more importantly, why do we go along with it? Because the stores wouldn't do it if it didn't work. Somewhere in us there is something that responds to the Halloween display in July. Something that finds the future more compelling than the present.

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The perfect future problem

Here's what I've been exploring: we have a hard time savoring the present moment because it's not perfect. And the moment we're anticipating in the future still is.

The imagined Halloween hasn't happened yet. Which means it exists entirely in our imagination, which means it has no tired kids, no candy corn discourse hate, no costume that didn't quite come together, no gap between what we hoped and what actually arrived. The imagined Halloween is pure Halloween. Untouched by reality.

The present moment, this July, is irreducibly imperfect. Not because our lives are bad but because real things always are. There are dishes in the sink. There's a conversation we haven't had yet. We're slightly behind on something. The weather isn't quite cooperating. Reality comes with texture and friction and the particular incompleteness that actual living always has.

So we skip ahead. Not because we're ungrateful but because the future is still winning the comparison. It hasn't had the chance to be real yet.

And here's where it gets interesting: the future moment isn't just more perfect than the present one. It's also still under our control. We can still plan it better, prepare more, choose differently. The present moment is already out of our hands. Savoring it means accepting that this is what we got and deciding to receive it fully anyway.

That's harder than it sounds. Especially for those of us whose protective patterns lean toward perfectionism or control. Fully inhabiting the imperfect present means giving up the refuge of the perfect future. It means letting this be enough even when it isn't everything.

And underneath all of that is something harder: if we fully inhabit this moment we have to feel whatever is actually here. Including the bittersweetness of summer already being half over. Including the awareness that this exact version of our lives, this particular July, will never exist again.

Savoring requires grieving a little. It asks us to feel the preciousness of the moment which means feeling its impermanence too.

Maybe that's why we run toward Halloween in July. The future is safe from loss. It hasn't happened yet so we can't have missed it. The present is already passing and savoring it means knowing that.

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Feel

Why Savoring is Harder Than it Sounds

Savoring is a specific psychological process that researchers Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff have spent decades studying. And the first thing they found is that savoring is not the same as enjoying something. It's the deliberate, conscious attention to a positive experience while it's happening. It's the difference between eating a good meal and actually tasting it. Between being at the beach and actually feeling the water. Between your kid laughing and commiting the sound to memory.

Savoring requires the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brain responsible for presence, attention, and meaning-making. And chronic hurry, anxiety, and forward-focus neurologically shut that part of the brain down. The capacity for savoring and the state of rushing are not just psychologically incompatible. They are neurologically incompatible. We literally cannot savor what we are rushing through.

Which means the first FEEL work of savoring is noticing when we've left the present moment. Not judging it. Just noticing. We're at the pool but mentally already at the school supply store. We're at dinner but half-planning the week. We're in summer but already grieving that it's almost over in a way that prevents us from actually being in it.

The 90-second practice works here in a different direction than usual. Instead of riding out a difficult emotion, we use it to fully receive a good one. Ninety seconds of actually being where we are. Feeling the heat. Hearing the sounds. Noticing what's good about this specific, imperfect, unrepeatable moment.

This is one of the highest forms of attention a human being can offer to their own life.

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Change

Patterns that Make Savoring Hard

The retail calendar isn't the only thing training us out of the present moment. Our protective patterns are doing it too and they're worth naming because awareness is where the shift begins.

The Over-Achiever pattern has the hardest time with savoring because rest feels like waste. There's always something more to accomplish, something to optimize, somewhere to be more productive. Fully inhabiting a slow summer afternoon can feel almost dangerous to this pattern. Like falling behind. Like squandering time that could be used for something.

A new perspecitve for the Over-Achiever: savoring is not the absence of achievement. It is one of the things worth achieving. The research is unambiguous that people who savor regularly report higher life satisfaction, stronger relationships, better mental health, and more resilience. Not because their lives are objectively better but because they are actually receiving what their lives are already offering. Savoring is productive. Just not in any way the Over-Achiever's scoreboard currently recognizes.

The Controller pattern stays future-focused because the future is still manageable. We can still influence it. The present moment is already what it is and savoring it means accepting that. For the Controller, being fully present requires a kind of surrender: releasing the grip on what comes next long enough to receive what's here.

A new perspective for the Controller: the present moment is actually the only place where real life happens. The future we're controlling toward never quite arrives as planned. The moments that actually become memories, the ones we return to years later and feel something about, are almost always moments we were fully present for. Control the conditions all you want. But the life worth having happens in the receiving, not the planning.

For both patterns the question is the same: what would it cost to be here for the next ten minutes? Actually here. Not planning, not optimizing, not already halfway to October. Just here, in this imperfect, passing, irreplaceable July.

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Build

How to Savor

The research on savoring identifies four specific strategies that work and they're worth knowing because savoring isn't just a feeling. It's a practice. Something we can get better at.

The first is what researchers call basking, which is simply absorbing positive experiences rather than deflecting them. This is harder than it sounds for a lot of us. Someone compliments something. Something goes well. A moment is genuinely lovely. And we immediately minimize it, qualify it, move past it. Basking means enjoying a good thing. Staying with it for a moment instead of rushing through it. Saying to yourself: this is good. I'm here for this.

The second is thanksgiving, which is not the holiday but the practice of actively expressing gratitude for what's happening while it's happening. Not a gratitude list at the end of the day but a real-time recognition. This sunset is remarkable. This is a really good meal. I love these people. Said out loud or just felt fully. The acknowledgment deepens the experience while it's occurring.

The third is marveling, which is allowing yourself to be genuinely astonished by something. Children are extraordinary at this and adults are terrible at it because we've seen too much and explained everything. But the capacity for wonder is still in us and it is one of the fastest pathways to genuine presence. And it doesn't have to be a big thing, like how I felt last year at the Grand Canyon; it can be as simple as the way light looks on water. The fact that this person exists and loves you. The sheer improbability of this specific summer afternoon. Let it be amazing. It actually is.

The fourth is luxuriating, which is focusing on physical sensation. The feel of the water. The taste of something cold. The particular warmth of summer evening air. Our bodies are present even when our minds aren't and coming back to physical sensation is one of the most direct routes back to the moment.

None of these require perfect conditions. All of them are available in an imperfect July, with the dishes in the sink and the to-do list not finished and the Halloween decorations already appearing at the store.

The summer isn't over. There are weeks of it left. Weeks of the particular quality of light that only exists in July and August. Weeks of the version of your life and your people that only exists right now, in this configuration, before school starts and the seasons change and this exact moment becomes something we can only remember.

We don't have to wait for October to feel something. We can feel this now.

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Halloween will come. It always does. And it will be wonderful and imperfect and over before we're ready and then it will be November.

But right now it's July. And July is actually the point right now.

The dopamine hit of the future moment will always beat the imperfect reality of the present one if we let it. But the future moment, however perfectly we imagine it, will never be available to actually live in. This one is. Right now. With all its texture and impermanence and ordinary beauty.

Savor it. Not because it's perfect. Because it's real. And because this particular version of it will never exist again.

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What's one thing about this summer you want to make sure you receive before it's over? Hit reply and tell me. Sometimes naming it is how we start paying attention to it.

P.S. Candy corn is good and I will not be taking questions. 🎃

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Have a lovely day! - Kate

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