Falling For Autumn

The first few days of any new season are always my favorite. Four times a year possibility is given a name – winter, spring, summer, fall. Each arrives with its own unique scent, filling the air with the sweetness of a new beginning. Four times a year the wind carries in a gentle reminder: It is time, now, for change.

As autumn begins to ripen, I reach for sweaters and cozy socks. I wrap my fingers around cups of warm coffee and tea. I snuggle up under blankets with good books and good friends. I watch the trees ignite into reds and yellows and oranges. I use my brown boots to crunch brown leaves. These are a few of my favorite things. There is so much to fall for in autumn.

And on that first day, walking out of the house and needing to go back in for a jacket, everything opens in a way you had forgotten to remember. You are reminded of the great cycle – not just of the seasons of the earth, but of the seasons of your life, the great rising and falling of your happiness. You are reminded that change is always possible, and inevitable, and something to be welcomed even when it requires saying goodbye to something else. You are reminded of the way a simple breeze can transform you.

Our cheeks turn pink in the crisp air. Our minds race through memories of first days of school, of the feel of new notebooks and pens, of the warm embraces of friends reunited, sharing tales of summer adventures. We remember these days as sign posts in the long, winding roads of our history. We can feel how far we’ve come, and also how close we still remain to the people we once knew, and the people we once were. In those moments, we were beginning and ending something all at the same time. In remembering those moments, we do the same.

Fall is arriving. I can smell it. I can taste it. It envelops me as it has every year since I began. And yet, it is something new and different. It is the beginning of a specific season of my life that will never come again. It is the opportunity to look back and move forward in ways that will never be the same. It is a time to feel possible.

In autumn, I fall for the trees. I fall for apple-picking and knitted hats. I fall for bonfires and pumpkins. I fall for cuddling. I fall for the way the leaves greet their death by bursting forth in color. I fall for the way they gather beneath the trees as an invitation for children to come play. I fall for the way children play in them. I fall for the way I remember playing in them too, in those autumns long ago, feeling so happy and carefree and in love with everything. I fall for the way these old memories help change me into something new.

Four times a year I am reminded of the way life and death collide. One cannot exist without the other, like happiness and sadness, like grief and love. Four times a year I watch the earth transform itself into something familiar and something brand new. Four times a year I open the door and sense the wind is shifting.

This morning I opened the door and found fall waiting for me. I knew what it had come to say. It is time now to say goodbye to another summer and hello to another autumn. It is time now to fling open the door and fall deeply into your life. It is time, now, for change.

Tragedy

It’s raining this morning. We woke up to bad news. Terrible, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching news.

And like all bad news, I’ve had to sit with it for a while before attempting to speak. My thoughts are always a little delayed. “This is so sad,” becomes “no really, this is SO sad” which eventually becomes “no really, this is devastatingly tragic.” I feel it instantly, but it takes longer to find the words. I am glad to have the day off.

What I want to say has already been said – my heart goes out to the victims, to their families, to everyone who woke up this morning and couldn’t find words. I feel the weight of our mutual sadness. I’m so sorry for all that’s been lost. There are no words that can help ease that pain.

But what I also want to say is that I have feelings about what happened last night in Colorado that extend beyond this incident alone, and they will be unpopular, but I need to express them, if only for my own attempts at understanding.

The outside world can be a sad and terrifying place. Bad things happen. Single moments can define us, and change us, and leave us feeling heartbroken and alone. We can lose everything in an instant. These violent acts remind us of that uncertainty. It is impossible to feel unaffected.

Because while what we feel is immense sympathy for the victims, what we also feel is a kind of egocentric sympathy for ourselves. We are all this vulnerable. None of us are safe from hurt.

It isn’t about us as the onlookers of these tragedies, but also, it is. It is about all of us. It is part of the human story. It reminds us that there’s still so much work to be done. There is far too much suffering and far too much pain. There are far too many stories that resemble this one.

People keep writing “what is the world coming to?” But the world is already here. We’ve been through this before. And as much as it pains us to admit, we’ll be through it again. The power of a single act will continue to overwhelm us, in the best and worst of ways. This too, is part of the human story.

And part of my human story is the inexplicable – perhaps disgraceful – part of me that feels something for the culprits of these unthinkable acts. It is not sympathy. What they have done is hideous and unforgivable. I could not, and would not, and am not defending them.

But there is something inside of me that recognizes that these are people in pain. Desperate, unrecognized and untreated pain. How sad and lonely and crazy the inside of their heads must be. And how can we ignore that this is happening? How can we keep allowing guns to be placed in irresponsible hands? How can we not be working harder to save one another, and protect one another, and use the boundless power of our voices and actions for good?

I’m not so naïve to think that everyone can be saved. I know that no amount of hugs would have stopped this from happening, as much as I’d like to live in a world where that were true. But I do know that there is a problem here, and it is not about a lack of emergency exits or security at the door. It is something larger, and sadder, and more terrifying. And we seem unwilling as a society and a species to address it.

There are people who feel trapped in the world that exists inside of them, worlds that can feel even more sad and terrifying than anything happening outside. And it leads them to do horrible, unforgivable things. And we don’t talk about that. And we don’t do enough to fix it. And we keep waiting for terrible things to happen before we allow ourselves to feel connected to each other.

And that is sad. No really, it is SO sad. No really, it is devastatingly tragic.

And while I don’t have answers, I do have knowledge, and it tells me that nothing can get better without change.

Protection

In the seventh grade, a friend of mine made a joke about committing suicide. I knew it was a joke because she laughed. Everyone laughed. But I didn’t. I could only smile in that awkward way I do when I know something’s not quite right but can’t find the words to explain it. I carried her comment with me all day.

It made me feel strange in a way I would later recognize as a kind of wisdom. To know something wasn’t right meant that I had a sense of what was. But of course, at the time, I didn’t feel wise. I just felt twelve and scared and uncertain of almost everything.

When I got home, I decided to tell my mother. She sat and listened calmly. There was a meeting at school the next day. I remember my friend walking out of it and approaching me in the hallway. “It was a JOKE, Frankie!” She yelled, not necessarily out of anger, but nevertheless in a way that made me feel small. Everyone stared. I smiled my awkward smile and buried my face in my locker. I don’t think I ever apologized.

It is the kind of embarrassing childhood moment that stays with you forever, no matter how wise or mature you become. We are all survivors of our childhoods. There are bound to be scars. There will always be regrets. There will always be stories we wish we could change.

And I got lucky, because this one did.

My mom brought it up a few weeks ago. “I tell that story all the time,” she said. And she reminded me about the night I told her, how afterwards she had started to make up the lie we would tell others. “We could say you wrote about it in your journal and I had gone through your things and read it.” She wanted to save me from having to be “the bad guy.” She wanted to protect me.

But I just looked at her and said, in the most matter-of-fact kind of way, “But mom, why would I want her to think I wouldn’t tell someone if I thought she was in trouble?” And my mom looked back at me, at my twelve-year-old face, and saw that I had grown up.

Protection is a funny thing. We confuse it sometimes with fear. We are afraid the truth will hurt others. We are afraid the truth will hurt us. We are afraid because the truth is more powerful than we can imagine, because it has the ability to change everything. We are afraid of change and we are afraid to change. Uncertainty is scary, no matter how old we get.

But when my mom changed this story for me by filling in the missing truths, I understood something about that embarrassing moment, the one I’ve been replaying in my head over the years, wishing I could go back and do it differently. I understood that I wouldn’t have done it differently. I wanted to protect my friend. That’s why I told the truth.

And the truth is that sometimes we love people so much that we have to risk hurting them. And the truth is that sometimes we love people so much that we have to risk being hurt by them and for them and because we love them. The truth is that not everyone who plays the bad guy is a bad guy. Sometimes they’re just people trying to do what they feel is right. Even when it may be embarrassing. Even when they’re scared. Even when they know it could change everything.

People may laugh. People may stare. People may say things that make you feel small. But love is a truth that’s always worth the risk. It is something I want to protect. That’s why I share it.

Lives Worth Living

More than once I have thought “this isn’t what my life is supposed to be.” You know what I mean, don’t you?

It’s something about the dreams you left behind. You made plans. You had a timeline. You were certain point A would lead to point B.

And then it didn’t. Things got messy, complicated. The checklists disappeared. Months turned into years. Suddenly you looked around and couldn’t remember how you arrived here, how things had gotten so far off track. The child who constructed that initial timeline felt like a distant memory, a stranger. Who was that young, hopeful girl? Where did she go?

Sometimes I just want things to be different, in every way. I want my life to change. I want to pick up and leave it all behind.

What I want isn’t much. The way I’d like to go on living in this world wouldn’t hurt anything. I’d just find some little spot to call my own, though I know it would never really be my own, and I’d spend my days strolling through the natural world, exploring, reflecting, writing about it. More than once I have felt that is the life I’m supposed to be living. More than once it has tugged at my heart. “Go. Now.”

I know several lives worth living. This is only one. Another is my own, on days when I’m wise enough to be grateful, when I’m not so foolish as to get caught up in the “supposed to be,” when I am brave enough to let go of the timeline without sacrificing the dreams.

I am a dreamer. It’s part of me, like writing and loving and kindness. It runs through my veins. It is in my blood. But we live in a world where that can sometimes be painful. Because it’s nice to dream, but it’s also important to survive. I can’t just walk away. I can’t just begin again. Not without giving up more than I’m willing to. There are things, so many things, worth keeping.

It’s easy to feel trapped by life. It’s easy to feel stuck by relationships, by money, by work, by obligations. It’s easy to feel as though you’ve reached a point of no return. But there exists, always, possibility. There are always choices to be made – perhaps not easy ones, or ones that can be deemed right or wrong. One choice always leads to another and what waits for us there are only more choices. It can feel exhausting, but it is also one of the greatest things about these lives of ours. They change. They grow. They evolve.

There are ways to improve. There are grand gestures that forever change the course of our plans, but there are also small daily choices that matter more than we realize. They are worth realizing. They are worth cherishing.

What I mean is, cherish them. Breathe in and breathe out. Smell. Taste. Hear. Listen. Touch. See. Stop and stare at the moon. Hug someone before they need to ask for it. Smile at strangers. Dream.

Happiness doesn’t always come roaring in. Sometimes it is just about taking one small step, and then another. Life doesn’t wait for you. Months become years. Things get messy, complicated. All I can do is keeping walking forward.

But every once in a while, if I’m wise enough to look for her, that young, hopeful girl shows up. She smiles. The world becomes wonderful around us. She points to the future, brimming with life and choices and possibility. She tells me “Go. Now.” My life is exactly what it’s supposed to be.

Hum For A Blustery Day

Somehow the warmest day of the year so far was also the windiest. It was also, somehow, one of the happiest. There was no reason for my joy, other than the weather, or the fact that the day before had been terrible and I was in need of change. Happiness doesn’t require more reasons than that. Happiness doesn’t require reason at all. It simply arrives when it’s time, over and over, like spring.

On my lunch break, I walked out across the back field. I stood behind the shed, filled with bikes and buckets and shovels – the tools of childhood – where the groundhogs had burrowed a home for themselves beneath. I watched the tree branches wave. I watched the clouds move. I watched airplanes glide through the blue silk of the sky like flying fish, leaving parallel white streams behind them. I reveled in the movement.

The wind wrapped me in its arms. It pushed and it pulled and it demanded my attention. I took off my shoes and planted my feet firmly on the ground, mimicking the trees. I bent. I waved. I moved, but I did not fall.

This is what the trees know. They know how to be flexible in the wind. They know that to stand rigid and unmovable against forces more powerful than themselves is a kind of death. They know that what doesn’t bend, breaks. They know how to gracefully let go of their leaves, to watch them float away as quickly and purposefully as the clouds. They know how to change. This is how they remain.

And so for a while I stood there, barefoot and happy, following their example. I took deep breaths and let go of things. I pictured the wind scooping them up and carrying them further and further away. Meanwhile I stayed, tied to my life by an unbreakable string, rooted in the joy that remained.

So this is happiness, I thought. This is life. It’s as easy as breathing. It’s as easy as bending with the wind. It’s as easy as turning the instability of the world into an example of our own powerful resilience. This is why I am here.

I require no more reasons than that. I am here to grow, and to change, and to make of my life a palace of beautiful leaves to cast out into the wind and to come back to me each spring. I am here to be both constant and moving. I am here to stretch my limbs.

Later that day, I remembered that it was Holi, the Hindu celebration of the arrival of spring. It is my favorite holiday, full of color and life and joy, like spring itself. Six years ago I stood on a rooftop in India and danced beside the trees among a group of strangers I would quickly grow to love. We threw colored powder and painted each other into masterpieces. We threw our arms into the air and laughed. We threw away all of the pieces of ourselves we were trying to leave behind. We watched them float away on the wind.

We welcomed spring, and happiness, and our upcoming adventures. We welcomed the uncertainty. We welcomed change.

On the warmest day of the year so far, I opened the door and walked out across the back field. I stood behind the shed. I pushed and pulled and bent in the wild, insatiable wind. I kicked off my shoes. I watched the trees. I breathed in and out, and let go.

And I swear I could taste it – the Indian air, the sweet constant happiness of spring.

The River

Some days the river is so sparkling that it appears solid. You feel as though you could almost walk across its shimmering surface, gleaming in the sunlight, like ice. And yet you know that it is tender and soft. Breakable, almost, were it not for the way it knows how to heal. Drop something heavy into it. Admire the way it erases the transgression of its surface with a slow whisper of lapping water. Watch the river swallow the heaviness, and then continue on. Learn this lesson.

The river continues, and in that way, it is both constant and forever changing. It is always the river, but it is also never quite the same. We’re not so different, are we? Forever ourselves, but always different than we were just a moment ago. Forever learning and evolving and continuing on. Forever moving, hard and soft as the river.

Answers always lead to more questions. One question always leads to another. The world doesn’t wait for us to catch up. Sometimes it feels as though I am just treading water, but in a way, that too, is movement.

Your body knows how to heal itself like the river. Wounds slowly become scabs, which eventually disappear. Or they leave scars, which you forever carry with you as the faint memory of your pain. But in a way, that too, is healing.

You have swallowed heaviness, no matter who you are, no matter if you have acknowledged it or not. You have sometimes wanted to appear solid. You have sometimes shined your surface. You have sometimes depended on your ability to seem cold, like ice.

And yet you know that you are tender and soft. Breakable, almost, were it not for the way you have yet to be broken. Because somehow, despite the unbearable weight that is sometimes dropped into your life, you are still here, surviving. You are still moving forward, continuing on. There are still more questions to be asked, and answers to be found. And then there will be more.

And you will keep rushing toward them, because this is what it means to be alive.

Time will float away, like the river. It will move too quickly and too slowly all at once. It will continue to change you. You will always be you, but you will always be different versions of you. But in a way, that too, is consistency.

You have learned this lesson at least once. You will learn it again and again. One revelation leads to another. You will forever be asking the important questions, whose answers are never quite the same.

Who am I? What do I want? What can I create? How do I love this world? How can I not love this world? How do I move forward, like the river? How do I make myself sparkle, like ice?

Meanwhile the river rushes forward. It doesn’t ask such questions. It simply continues on, healing itself in slow whispers. But in a way, that too, is an answer.