It's quite shocking really how quickly time passes. Just last week we were basking in the warm sun and savouring languorous, sultry summer evenings. Then, it was easy to imagine that it could last forever, that summer would always wrap us in her warmth.
Now everything has changed. The days suddenly are short and the sharp chill of autumn is in the air. Nature, it seems, is warning us that time, indeed, is passing and we better get started readying for winter.
Summer's endless promise turned out to be a lie. Afternoons lazing in the hammock or floating in thelake were only transitory pleasures. Although we didn't want to think about it at the time, we must have known that they would end. We must have understood that autumn would come and drive summer into our memories.
If summer is a time of reverie, the time that we allow ourselves to live-in and relish the moment; then for many people autumn is a time for busyness, to get tasks done. In autumn, we live for the future. It's a time to prepare for what's coming.
I'm often surprised by the numbers of people who count the fall as their favourite season. Often they say they feel renewed energy and a purposefulness. The cooler weather and regular schedule makes them feel industrious.
Ironically, in literature autumn represents aging and impending death. Instead of keeping busy, autumn is a time of reflection. In one of his poems, Laurence Binyon says that fall "is the time for stripping the spirit bare,/Time for the burning of days ended and done." It is the time for us to consider exactly who it is that we are.
Of course Binyon is talking about the "autumn" of one's life, but I think that the season offers the same opportunity. There's something sombre and contemplative about this time of year. It may be the darkening skies, the shorter days or the dropping temperatures (my neighbour would say that it's just because I'm returning to work) but I tend to spend more time turning inward in the fall. I want to spend more time alone.
It's not that I'm depressive, it's just that I tend to get more serious in my thinking, in my reading and in my demeanour. But right now I'm not ready for that shift; I don't want to be serious. Summer ended much too quickly and I want to be frivolous.
I feel cheated, like something has been stolen from me and the memory of the warm summer evenings isn't enough to compensate for the extra layers of clothes we're obliged to wear now. Knowing that seven months of rain and darkness are ahead makes me want to crawl under a blanket and hibernate.
But in the gloom there is some solace, a bright spot. Time does pass and, as Binyon assures us in his poem, "Nothing is certain only the certain spring."
