Thoughts For Autumn

This is not a blog about pumpkins, spiced lattes or forgotten scarves. It’s not even written by one who particularly likes the Fall Season. It’s just that I was thinking about how life can feel Autumn-y at times, and I I’m encouraged by these musings. I wonder if you will be, too.

First though, here’s why I don’t like Autumn. I’m generally a morning person, and sometimes I think of the calendar year like one big long day. Spring (AKA my favourite Season) is the morning time: The sun starts sneaking back, flowers begin to bud and the ground thaws ready for something new. Summer is midday: The sun is hot, things are growing and we’re well adjusted into the year. Autumn is early evening: The light dims and leaves begin to dry after a hard days work. Winter is late evening: All is quiet and all is still. I don’t really like evenings. An evening signals the end of a day and I can’t help but find that a little bit sad. In keeping with my metaphor, Autumn for me is the uncompromising reminder that the year is coming to a close, whether I like it or not.

On a recent walk alone I decided to list to myself what is good about Autumn (after all, I don’t want to become grumpy every time September unfolds). I thought about the beautiful chorus of colour, and how the turning leaves are embracing their final bloom of the year. I thought about how the falling leaves clear way for what is new, and how those crisp leaves will go on to fertilise the soil beneath them. Perhaps Autumn isn’t as fruitless as I once blamed? I thought too about the humble uniformity of the trees each losing their leaves together, and that this is a time when nature is letting go rather than holding on. Finally, I found comfort in remembering the firs and the pines (the trees that don’t shed) and how not all is lost ready for Winter.

Life ebbs and flows and I think we can find ourselves in seasons (chapters) that are similar our calendar’s various Seasons. There are those times when we’re going strong on a new fitness app and have a roaring social life (Summer), and there are times when we really don’t. Times when we’re inexplicably sleepier and craving routine and in need of excess room to recharge (Winter).

Right now I think my feet are newly planted in an Autumn Season - and I’m not just speaking literally. I feel good about that. For me, it is time to let go of what is old. Time to humbly accept that old things need to fall away in order to make way for what is new. It’s time for Nate and I to finish unpacking once and for all (we still have one stubborn, is-it-even-still-there? pile of boxes after moving recently), and for me to stop avoiding some tasks that have been lingering since March (sigh). It’s time for me to see good and beauty and life in the process of letting things go, and to allow hope to muster as I build new expectations for what is to come. I wonder, what Season do you find yourself in?