Parallels

Parallels

On this cloudy early-autumn morning the seasons remind me, once again, how much they parallel life. We're born and grow in the spring of our lives. Everything is new, exciting and fresh. That first tulip blooming in the radiance of a welcome spring sun, that first daffodil, the first cherry blossoms, the first warm day, the first signs of life reborn from dead, dark, dirt, frozen and bitter, hard and cold yet yielding such splendid life.

The the summer comes and the warm days and warm nights - the time for us to enjoy our new status as fully-grown adults. No longer are we amazed so much by that first tulip or the first blooming of the rose - we've seen it all before. But summer is the time of our lives we forget that spring has just departed and that autumn looms sometime in our future - too far away to be relevant yet it hovers always just beyond the horizon - waiting for us. Waiting for the summer to end. As we go about our summer things we forget the preciousness of the hours we waste, the days we squander, the months we spend chasing fleeting foolishness, the years we toss away as though we had an unlimited supply.

Autumn must shake her pretty head watching us in our folly, chasing the butterflies of desire and greed - foolishness all. Those of us who forget that our days upon this Earth are finite chase these superficial butterflies too long. They can lure us in our youth when time seems to stretch before us as a never-ending golden road - ripe with riches and pleasures, all ours for the taking. But autumn crouches silently waiting for us to arrive. You can almost see her sadness as she watches us young, vain and proud, preening foolishly in the mirror, mocking time. You can almost hear her sullen sighs whispering in the golden trees.

We are then shocked when we see those first tinges of color upon the leaves of those once-green summer trees. We are at once captivated and appalled when the corn is dead in the fields drying - we look at it and think our eyes deceive us - until that first flake of autumn snow touches our bare hand and shake us awake from our dream. We realize then that summer has gone and
we will never see it again.

We can accumulate massive wealth and memories of desire and of friends and people we used to know. As autumn reveals herself to us, only then do we take account of our lives and how we spent or squandered those splendid golden days in the summer of our lives. Too often, we look back in disbelief that summer has gone and autumn has come and we cannot go back in time and savor those warm days of our youth. Stunned by the resplendent and colorful scenes pained so perfectly by the hand of autumn we know that all that awaits us now is the cold, dark, icy caress of winter's arms - eagerly waiting for us not far enough away. We have no choice but to enjoy autumn's vivid beauty and drink in those last warm winds that serve to remind us that summer has gone and winter waits with a sad and surreal grin.

Winter is the final season of our lives. Spring and summer pass all too quickly for those who did not take time to savor the important things in life, those who wasted their spring and summer on superficial folly. Yet who among us is wise enough to know in our youthful exuberance, which things are folly and which things are substantial?

Cold, wild winds this morning and the trees tinged with autumn colors remind me to remind myself that autumn has come and summer has gone. And, to remember the important things in my life this day; enjoy them and drink them in.

The winter lies just ahead - a surly, capricious beast, sometimes disguised in white lamb's wool. Winter can be beautiful. Winter can be placid. Winter can be savage. Regardless of what winter brings, we all know that winter will not end until he has taken the life from us. A bitter ending I think not. Those of us who live through the autumn of our lives and into the winter have enjoyed the opportunities the four seasons have given us. Those whose lives were cut short will never see the beauty or the resignation that winter brings.

Today is all we have. We have to live each moment and enjoy what we can. Time grows shorter and life grows more dear.

I am fascinated by how much life parallels the seasons -

and the seasons parallel life.

All content is