Autumn is my favourite season of the year. Call me crazy, but I love it as the days gradually cool to the point where there is a hint of crispness in the air that gently tweaks one’s cheeks, and one needs to put on a light jacket and long pants to guard against the chill. I love to be wrapped up in a blanket by a crackling fire as the rain teems down on a dull, grey day, watching the leaves beginning to be blown from their summer resting place in the trees.
But most of all I love the rich colours – the plethora of shades of red and yellow and orange in the autumn leaves before they give in to nature’s call and fall to their final resting place on the hardening ground.
For the past week I have been up north in Muskoka. It is late August and just in the past three days the forest has started to become ablaze with its ripening colours. One day it was just shades of green and then suddenly – literally overnight – there have been pockets of flaming colour appearing throughout the greenery.
Perhaps it was that the previous day was just the right temperature of warmth coupled with a sudden shiver of cold in the night to set off the chemical chain reaction in the leaves to convert chlorophyll (which gives them their green hue) into those rich shades of red, orange and yellow. But whatever it is that triggers this miraculous transformation, it is always a thrill to witness this final sweep of God’s magnificent paintbrush in nature around us at this time of year.
As I sat and drank in this glorious colour yesterday – somehow heightened in its contrast to the drabness of a dark and rainy day’s pallor – I mused on how nature offers up this “last hurrah” of radiant beauty right before a part of it dies off. For me it certainly is the height of the beauty of a tree. Blossoms and freshly sprouted leaves are nice, but there is something much more exciting and vibrant to me in the brilliance of autumn colours.
With this, I also began to think of the nature of humankind. There is a freshness and an unbridled energy that comes with those who have just blossomed into adulthood, and they bring an unswerving enthusiasm and passion to life, but it is usually only those in their “middle years” who finally attain high positions such as presidents of countries or large corporations, having been tempered by longstanding experience and having learned wisely from years of observation and interaction in all kinds of situations. There is a brilliance of beauty in these later years that is not found in their younger counterparts.
And beyond such success we often see even greater humanitarian, diplomatic and political success. Certainly former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, as well as former vice-president Al Gore, have been shining examples of the “beauty” to be seen their mature statesmanship and greater accomplishments subsequent to what would have seemed to be the pinnacle of their political successes.
Similarly, it is only when one reaches grandparenthood that one finally arrives at the realization and true understanding that children will reach maturity safely and happily in spite of a parent’s rules and regulations and provision for them, rather than because of them. The wisest of grandparents also understand that children flourish best when they are delighted in and seen not just for who they are now, but for all the potential they hold in the future. There is no greater joy than to watch a grandparent gaze upon the children of their own children with unabashed adoration and complete true love!
Yet in spite of the fact that there seems to be a natural climactic peak for such wisdom, grace and inner beauty in the later years of life, we have sadly seemed to have become a culture that reveres youth and which almost desperately goes to extreme lengths to preserve (or perhaps mummify?) a physical youthful look.
How many of us have shaken our heads at the parades of television and film stars whose faces get tighter, eyes wider and motionless brows and upper lips slacker as they years move on. Their dread of the inevitable visible signs of aging ironically seems to take a greater visible toll on their spirit, and really does not recapture any essence of their youth – it only just tightly saran-wraps their aging bodies and yet seems to regresses them emotionally and spiritually.
How often I hear from those my age and older that they would never wish to return to their really youthful years (in spite of the disappearance of hair where it used to be, and the cruel appearance of it where it shouldn’t!) And though it can be physically frustrating as our bodies begin to set limitations on our stamina and strength, there is something in aging which is quite remarkably beautiful, if we allow it and recognize it within ourselves.
We have finally become comfortable in who we are and how we see the world. And there is beauty in the richness of life experience coupled with a softened heart that has learned to appreciate that everyone is unique, both in their strengths and in their flaws, and so is to be accepted and enjoyed just for who they are; beauty in the humility that has come from a lifetime of mistakes and disappointments that reminds one that they have no basis on which to judge others, joined with a newfound urgency in making each day and interaction with others meaningful and worthwhile, as one has a heightened sense that death is increasingly nipping at one’s heels.
So just as nature winds down the aging cycle with a masterful burst of rich and glorious colour, so we too as humans can look forward to not decline but to a richness of character and beauty that is not overshadowed by the fading of the physical, but is in fact somehow enhanced by it. These glorious colours in nature that now surround me remind me to look not at what no longer is and mourn its loss, but to marvel at a new richer beauty within – to give thanks and make the most of the timeless richness it can add to the world around and within me.
The transformation has just begun …
