Amy Lu's View

I’m a macrodiaphile.

It’s not a word that exactly rolls off the tongue, but it’s the invented label created for me by AI (Gemini). Yes, I willingly consulted an AI Overlord and asked: “Is there a word for someone who really really likes long days?” Gemini explained that there isn’t, but that it could make up something for me “by combining some beautiful Greek roots.” So I’m choosing its offering of Macrodiaphile which combines macro (long), dia (day), and phile (lover)—literally, a lover of long days. 

So yes, that’s me, a macrodiaphile, a lover of long days (days with as many hours of daylight as possible). It’s not that I specifically love sunshine (I usually do) or basking in the sun (although I certainly can enjoy that) but I just want several hours of daylight. Circadian rhythms be damned, I’d love it if the sun didn’t set until at least midnight all year round. 

At least I think I’d love that. The closest experience I’ve had to living with days that long is years ago when we had a vacation in Anchorage in June and the sunset was never before 11:30. I thought that was glorious, but we were only there for less than a week. So maybe I would eventually get tired of tons of daylight, especially since I can’t sleep if I’m in a room with even a teeny amount of light–but that’s what eye masks are for. I’m willing to take the risk and find out. 

And yes, I do acknowledge that I wouldn’t be spending most of my life actively enjoying the abundant hours of daylight. I’m very thankful of our Minnesotan mid-summers when it is still light out until 9:30ish, but sometimes I struggle to have the energy to do anything other than watch TV after 9:00 (and being in our basement away from windows seems wrong). And of course I’m not even considering regularly appreciating  hours of sunlight that occur before 7:00 a.m. (can we move those pre-7:00 a.m. hours of daylight to post 9:00 p.m.?). 

Why do I love the daylight so much? The best answer that I can come up with is that it just feels magical and special. It fills me with awe. All this daylight makes life feel removed from the normal bonds of time. I don’t necessarily have Seasonal Affective Disorder, but the early winter sunsets feel constrictive and claustrophobic, while a 9:00 p.m. sunset feels expansive and vast.

I’ve also had this recurring dream (or maybe I just had it once but for whatever reason I still remember it) where I’m at my childhood home and it’s well past midnight but it’s still daylight out. Okay, not an exciting dream plot-wise when I describe it, but it had a strong emotional resonance for me and I still think about the feeling of the dream that I can’t capture with words. Beyond the emotional and sensory impact, I don’t think the dream really signifies anything except perhaps I’m channeling the memory of one of my Norwegian ancestors that did live in the Land of the Midnight Sun. 

Despite my dream setting of the home of my youth, I don’t think I’ve always been a macrodiaphile. As a kid I wasn’t that in tune with the natural world (even though we lived in the country) so while I definitely did not like it when it got dark at 5:00 at night in the winter, I wasn’t exactly twirling around in a field at 9:30 p.m. to savor the lingering light.

But I am desperately trying to savor the long days now, and honestly, I feel some pressure about it. How can I possibly make the most of this fleeting time of grandeur? How can I ever soak up enough light to sustain me through the confines of winter? 

This time near the summer solstice fills me with wonder of what is and dread what’s coming. 

Maybe that’s part of the reason I care so much more about the long days in my late middle age. I now have a much better understanding of how fast time goes, and that these long days will be gone in what feels like an instant. And I now also understand more fully that even if I’m super optimistic about time, I only have so many light-filled summers ahead of me (not trying to be morbid or dramatic but sometimes the math is just staring one in the face). 

I know that to fully experience life and soak it up, I need to live in the present, to be mindful of what is happening NOW, and not obsessing about the future. But it’s so hard for me to enjoy something knowing that it isn’t going to last. Of course, nothing in life lasts–I’m not exactly forging into new philosophical or spiritual territory with this blog post. But impermanency feels particularly real and poignant to me when I ponder the small window of time I have to enjoy summer’s long days.

Being aware of impermanence isn’t all bad–it does make me appreciate life’s delights, like long days, more.

I started this post with an AI made-up Greek based word, and I’ll end with a real, if not quite right, German word (also supplied by AI): “Abschiedsschmerz”. Literally this means “farewell-pain”, so I’ll tweak it to mean “anticipating a farewell-pain” (I’ve got a significant amount of German ancestry mixed in with the Norwegian so I think I’m allowed.) Trying to learn how to pronounce this word can distract me from my macrodiaphile-related angst.