To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. — George Santayana
I am hopelessly in love with autumn, even though there is a slight hiccup in my usual autumn plans this year. I do think those of us in the North Country are forgiven for fond thoughts of Anything But Winter in the midst of January and February, and can be hopelessly in love with Anything But Winter without necessitating harsh judgment.
But this isn’t about the weather, not really.
It’s about looking back and trying to live in the past, in hindsight and nostalgia, which is a salty and deadly experience. (Genesis 19:26). There’s nothing wrong with remembering what God has done in our lives; that much is true. We tend to remember the tough times rather than His good things, so making a point of remembering the good is work we should do. We can “raise our Ebenezer” like the songwriter said, a reminder of God’s ever-present help (1 Samuel 7:12). Remembering yesterday gives us faith for tomorrow.
But we don’t live back there.
I suspect what makes shifting to different seasons in life difficult is that it’s usually not a hard line. The leaves don’t turn red and yellow suddenly on September 21. The snow doesn’t disappear on March 21. It’s usually gradual. Most of us aren’t going to experience a sudden tragedy that forces us to become someone else when the foundation and routine we’ve known is suddenly gone. We don’t always have a date and time for the moment when everything changed. There’s still some summer mixed in with autumn, and it’s tough knowing which season you are really in. What is in the past, and what is in the future, and what direction am I walking if I don’t know which is which?
The next season is coming, regardless.
There’s an old Soviet joke that says that “the future is certain; it’s the past which is unpredictable.” This is the historian’s joke, really, referring to the way history is written, bearing more responsibility in how we remember and understand it than what actually happened—that, and how history keeps repeating itself and foisting itself onto the future.
We rewrite our own histories in our heads, sometimes on purpose, but often without knowing it. Generally, we do a terrible job, and it has the same impact on our lives as those Soviet jokesters alluded to.
We forget what it was like to live through our own past— “it’s hard to remember how we felt when we know how the story ends” as Morgan Housel put it so excellently—and we see it through rose-colored glasses. It’s not a correct understanding of who, why, and how. So we get caught up, as Housel notes, thinking of how different we could be now if we’d done one simple thing back then, beating ourselves up by extrapolating an incorrect path through our past from our comfort in the future, forgetting all the landmines that we were navigating back there in the wars.
We recall, sometimes vaguely, the facts of the past, but not the emotions that accompanied them. That is, unless you’re a journal hoarder or have been blogging (digital journaling, basically) for 25 years. Then you have written proof of what it felt like. It is strange to read those things, to be sure. I don’t recognize the person I was, but I also can’t quite figure out when I stopped being that person.
Why do the seasons sneak up on us?
I don’t know what it is for you, but one reason it is difficult for me is that I tend to hang onto objects and habits, and ten years go by without much alteration.
I’m still wearing the same (albeit worn) clothes. I use the same makeup. I do my hair the same. I’m using the same art supplies. I say the same phrases of old yore, the 80s. I don’t move around too much, so my home stays the same. I have the same books. I have the same daily routines. I have traditions and continue to follow them. My room is unchanged. I don’t notice the passage of time—which explains why every rare time I dust, I’m surprised at the accumulation—and I’m always startled to realize others have traveled on in time when it seems as if I have not.
“What are you doing over there?” I might ask. “I’m still wearing the same sweatshirt I had in college! Come back!”
Relationships and friendships are the hardest, for sure, when it comes to seasonal changes.
I still think that I’m moving in the same lifelong circles, because the past seems as close as today, unaware that my circle is emptying out. It’s a shock when I realize people have moved on and failed to inform me of the exact moment, even though there wasn’t one. It was the mushy summer-into-autumn scenario, and I didn’t notice when all the leaves had turned.
“This is going to sound weird,” I told my friend recently about a much-treasured and what I thought was a lifelong friendship that I’d been struggling to hold onto for years without much success. The season had changed, and it was time for me to dress for it. “I’m going to move on through grieving and just let it go.”
Friend-to-enemy is easier to understand than friend-to-acquaintance. The shift from friendship to acquaintance is as tough a seasonal change to be aware of as summer-into-autumn. You generally don’t realize it until a slight blast of winter hits and you wonder how the summer turned so cold, unaware autumn was trying to lead you in gently.
So it is.
I can’t change much about how I perceive time, since I’m trapped in it like you are. I might not be able to rightly remember things of the past. But perhaps I can stop trying to glue the leaves back on the trees, thinking it’ll keep the wintery blasts from arriving.
Part of the reason nostalgia exists is because, knowing what we do today, we often look back at the past and say, “you really didn’t have much to worry about.” — Morgan Housel