The Great Lesson of Autumn

 

09.23.2022 THE GREAT LESSON OF AUTUMN We’ve arrived at the first weekend of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere — a fact that feels a little bittersweet. As the warmth of summer fades away, you may find yourself anxiously anticipating the colder days ahead, but there’s plenty to look forward to in this season of change and transition. As Pico Iyer writes in “My Private Cineplex,” the beauty of change just happens to be the great lesson of the autumn season. “The leaves are giving off their richest, most generous colors as they fall,” he writes. “You don’t know whether to feel happy or sad, which means that it’s a choice, in part — and besides, the seasons will keep turning, the colors will keep flaring, the branches will soon be bare again, and everyone will be covered up, whether you want them to be or not. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.” The three pieces in this Weekend Reader exemplify the wisdom found this season, reminding us of the beauty of impermanence and urging us to trust the ebb and flow of the natural world. Change is inevitable — and sometimes painful — autumn tells us, but it brings with it great beauty and transformation. May this wisdom help you see that in the days ahead. —Lilly Greenblatt, Digital Editor, Lion’s Roar

Gone, Gone, Everything Gone Like leaves in the autumn or wood in the fire, all things pass. But, there is a moment in which we can see things as they are. I discovered a mantra by a lake in the woods. We were on our way to the family cabin but, as someone who regularly copes with a panic disorder, I was paralyzed, as usual, by compulsive negative thoughts and anxiety. My mind went from shaming me for not keeping in touch with friends, to giving me a guilt trip for not seeing my mother that weekend, to blaming me for taking a vacation instead of working. It just wouldn’t stop. When you’re thinking, you barely notice thoughts. A sentence plays out in your head, but it’s not spoken like the internal monologue of a cartoon character. It just is. And it’s indiscernible from reality. I was watching beautiful red and orange leaves falling in the autumn air along the road; but, as my migraine grew in intensity, I felt like I was driving straight to hell.

My Private Cineplex The writer’s job, says Pico Iyer, is to watch his moods and thoughts, as captivating yet passing as the seasons, and decide which are worth sharing. The skies are high and warm and brilliant in the autumn, even in early December; the parks are full of gold and yellow and scarlet. The warmth is deceiving, and yet everything is deceiving, because it’s all contradicted by everything else around it. The season cannot be quite as renewed and buoyant as the skies suggest; you can feel the sting of cold in the air. And yet it can’t be as elegiac as you suppose either, because the leaves are giving off their richest, most generous colors as they fall. You don’t know whether to feel happy or sad, which means that it’s a choice, in part — and besides, the seasons will keep turning, the colors will keep flaring, the branches will soon be bare again, and everyone will be covered up, whether you want them to be or not. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.

Do Dishes, Rake Leaves Karen Maezen Miller on how the domestic practice of ancient Zen masters can lead us to intimate encounters with our own lives. A part of every autumn day finds me fuming at the sight of falling leaves. Then, I pick up a rake. Tell me, while I’m sweeping leaves till kingdom come, is it getting in the way of my life? Is it interfering with my life? Keeping me from my life? Only my imaginary life, that life of what-ifs and how-comes: the life I’m dreaming of. At the moment that I’m raking leaves, at the moment I’m doing anything, it is my life, it is all of time, and it is all of me.

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