The Best Season

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, 

a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. 

If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, 

this is the best season of your life. 

-      Wu-Men

 

Though I’m retired from school-teaching two years, these last blog posts show that part of me is still aligned with the turn toward the new school year. Yet when my brother-in-law asked me yesterday if I missed school, I was surprised by how swiftly and forcefully I answered, “No!” Of course, I loved most every minute with the kids my 45 years at one school and mostly enjoyed my fellow teachers and the community we created. But just as when one is immersed in the glories of one season, they don’t feel longing for another, there is a seasonality to our lives and it behooves us to savor the gifts of each.

 

I’d like to think of my 71 years as the Fall of my life (though realistically, more late November than early October) and for much of my life, Fall held a special resonance for me. Growing up in New Jersey, I had the pleasure of enjoying the beauty of the Fall leaves turning color, the fun of trying to catch them as they fell and jumping into the piles I had raked from the front lawn. Though I didn’t wholly love school, I enjoyed the excitement of the beginning of it, the possibility of a good teacher and interesting work and re-uniting with classmates. I felt the crispness in the air and in the apples and anticipated with delight the approach of Halloween. So if indeed, my life’s season is Fall, it’s a good place to be.

 

My childhood seasons of Fall’s turning leaves, Winter’s snow, Spring’s flowers and Summer’s beaches became something else in my San Francisco adult life— Sun, Rain, Wind and Fog, but I learned to love each in their turn. So we would do well to love both the annual turn of the seasons and the larger cycle of our lifetime— the Spring of our childhood, the Summer of our adulthood, the Fall of our matured self, the Winter of our departure. And to understand that all live side-by-side. Here in northern Michigan, my childhood playful self is alive and well in company with my grandchildren, my active adult self is planning workshops and reflecting still on the craft of teaching, my elder self is sitting on the deck savoring the sunset, all three preparing for the reluctant, but inevitable turn to the Winter with the tree’s branches wholly stripped. 

 

But the key line in the poem is “if your mind is not clouded by unnecessary things” and that requires an active effort to refuse the trivialities tugging at our sleeve for attention and focusing on what is truly important. Whether through breathing, writing, music, walks on forest paths, making the effort to actively pay attention, savor and feel gratitude. I fail daily in this as much as the next person, but also find my moments of grace when I can sincerely say, “This is the best season of my life.”