The poignancy of autumn and of things that end

I was driving the girls to the school bus this morning, talking about pick ups, Laetitia shared a bad joke, and it suddenly dawned on me that the most amazingly beautiful spectacle was unfolding in front of us. The sun was rising, a crisp, glowing light, shining through layers of clouds, with shades of fluorescent blue and pink, the trees are showing their autumn colours, a concert of reds, yellows, deep purple.

Had we gone to London to watch Le Cirque du Soleil, there couldn’t have been more beauty, poetry and music. And it was right there, available and free for all to see and enjoy.

Noone does the marketing for sun rises, so it all too often goes unnoticed. Yet the shows that do lay on large advertising campaigns to sell tickets in effect only try and reproduce that magic that we can witness outside so often.

But that’s not the point of this blog. The point is that autumn is all about death. About nature’s swan song before dying for the winter. And this makes it so beautiful and poignant. In spring Nature adorns herself with gorgeous colours to attract the bees, but here, the beauty is gratuitous, there’s no obvious biological utility in leaves going the most amazing pink, crimson, golden yellow, deep purple… It’s as if God was indulging in a moment of celebration, a celebration of the beauty of Life and Creation. Before closing all the systems down to enable something else, different, new, to be born again the next year.

As if God was telling us time and time again that we need death to allow us to be born again. That the best things must come to an end to allow other things to happen even more beautiful and wonderful. That there’s no point in clinging on to something you cherish, because that too will change, and you have to trust that spring will come again and bring new joys.

Our yoga teacher this week-end was saying how someone on a spiritual path experiences constant new beginnings. We (her students) were all saying how we felt we were just beginning something. She quipped “there’ll be many beginnings”. As we peel the layers of who we are, getting closer to the centre, different facets appear, defining more and more clearly who we are, always getting closer to our true self.

It could all feel very sad, don’t we all want to be happy, and keep constant the conditions that make us happy? Humans want constance and would sell their soul to make the sun shine every day. But that’s not how life works. Nature still has the upper hand, and reminds us time and again that nothing is constant and that surrendering to the cycles of change is the only way to be.

As long as we trust that spring will come again, we’ll be fine.

(funny what a school drive can inspire…)