I love the fall. I love the bold warm colors. I love the crisp chill in the air. I love that the light bends farther and all the colors seem richer. I was born in the fall, so maybe I have a natural association with it. School starts in the fall, and I always got new clothes and got to start all over again in a new (higher) grade!

I like the first fire in the fireplace, the first raking of the leaves, (which, to be honest, I don’t do anymore-but I like to watch Tom!), and the first frost. That is a thing of beauty.
Although it signals the end of summer and a transition to winter I don’t feel it’s the end of summer, or the beginning of the “dreaded” winter. (I actually like winter until about February, and then you can have it back!) Instead I see change. I see the cycle of life. I remember that, “to everything, there is a season”. That unless a plant dies and drops its seed, it cannot continue. Unless the leaves die they stay green and we never see the structure of the underlying branches against a fall sunset. I know there are tropical climates where the trees never lose their leaves, but there are seasons there as well, with cycles of life and death.

In that light, it is the death of one thing and a new beginning for another. If you think of fall like that you begin to think in terms of your own life and its cycles. Unless I let go of a thing, good or bad, I cannot grow and move on to new things. Sometimes we want to stay in a perpetual summer. (choose your favorite season) Try as you might to stay in that warm summer sun, the cycle of life has other plans. Change is the only constant in this world! But when you fight that flow, block the rhythm, stifle the natural order of things, to hold on to something you enjoy and is comfortable, you create friction.

There is a similar order to my creative world and maybe yours as well. We need to change and grow in our applications, our processes and our conceptions. We should try to view change as growth and strive to move out of the season that has treated us so well we don’t want to leave! If we keep doing the same things the same way, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow we stagnate and eventually smell! So in the end…its dies anyway! And isn’t that the whole point? It just whether you are going to fight the process or move with it willingly!

So my final thought here is this: just because you prefer one season over another does not mean you cannot find the beauty of that different season with the change and embrace it. Because the truth here is, you can’t stay there long either! Soon fall gives way to the first snowfall, which in turn is followed by the first crocus. And so it goes. I like the permanence of seasonal change! Think deeply, love richly, laugh loudly!