What season are you in?
I started this newsletter last week when it was 39 degrees Celsius. I’m ready for the Fall. I don’t like heat and humidity. I was grateful for the timing of spending a day at Long Point Provincial Park body surfing with my grandkids. On the way home, I squeezed in a bit of bird-watching. You can’t see the Great Egrets in the photo, but they were there filling up on fish for their fall migration to warmer places.
This morning, it is 17 degrees outside. All the signs are here that the fall season is on our doorstep. The leaves have lost that deep green. The goldenrod is ubiquitous. The nights are consistently cooler. The days are getting shorter, and I hear you can now get a Pumpkin Latte at Starbucks. I am happy about all of it!
We are in the transition from summer to fall. We are still enjoying the perks of warm weather, but we know those days aren’t going to be here indefinitely.
I’ve been thinking about seasons in the bigger picture of our lives.
Earlier in my life, I worked with organizations doing long-range strategic planning. It wasn’t uncommon to have a five-year strategic plan! I left that world before the pandemic, and I am curious if organizations have now changed their approach.
In my work, I used to plan out my year. I would download an annual business planning tool every December and map out my year. In February, I was usually behind and missed my targets. Eventually, I stopped looking at it all together. A few years ago, I decided to be more realistic about my time and priorities at this stage.
Older and wiser, my planning now is seasonal. As we head into Fall, I am thinking from here until the end of December about what programs and events I am running. I will start thinking about January to March sometime near the end of November.
Living by the seasons appeals to me. I know that I like to escape the heat in the summer and get away from my desk. Once the colder weather comes, I welcome slowing down and writing again.
One of the exercises we do in my workshop, The Sage’s Journey, is to look at our lives through the lens of seasons. We map out our lives as a cycle, with each seven years representing a month. We use that approach to do a Life Review, a powerful exercise.
The life review shows us the seasons of our lives, including the times of growth and the times when things were fallow.
I’ve always loved these words:
For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).
One of the challenges in life is we don’t always know when we are about to enter a new season. Sometimes, we can see the signs, and if we pay close attention, we know things are changing. Sometimes, things change quickly with an accident, a diagnosis or a death.
You may be in a season of grief or a season of illness. You may be in a season of transition (aren’t they all?), getting ready to retire or downsize. Maybe you are in a season of supporting aging parents or caring for an ailing spouse. It might not be your favourite season, but here you are, waiting for something to shift.
My work focuses on offering resources to help you do the inner work to prepare for your life's fall and winter seasons. We do that by repairing the past (life review and forgiveness work) and preparing for the future (confronting our fears around mortality, considering our legacy) to be fully present today.
I am offering The Sage’s Journey this Fall. The program is new; you can take it online or in person. I’ve put together a webpage for the in-person program. It is going to be held monthly at a beautiful venue. We’ll sit by the fire and go deep into this conversation. Read more by clicking on the link below.