It’s Fall

This morning if finaly felt that fall had arrived. I have been wearing my fall/spring coat for a few weeks and the sun has been getting up dangerously late; but I didn’t feel that it was here until I parked at the train station this morning. The combination of cool air, heavy dew, a slight, low fog, and the dusting of yellow leaves that were starting to accumulate at the curbs brought on the hope that I feel every fall.

And it is hope. I’ve been in academia for so long that any give year feels like it has two beginnings: one in January with the start of the calendar, one in September near the start of the school year. Beginnings always remind me of possibility, that I have the opportunity to start again. I need that restart. It is essential for me to believe that the decisions I’ve made are changeable, that when they lead to unwelcome (or outright wrong) events I can course correct or abandon.

And I have this bipolar relationship with that process. I don’t like to give up. I do believe that anything is possible and so over time I become weighed down with the burden of it. Sadly, I can’t prevent it. Life would be so much easier if I could recognize a little earlier these subtle cues that I am drifting toward a not-right-for-me ending. But that’s not how I work. I slowly accumulate the weight of my own myopic ideals. It’s somewhat like being covered in dust. Layer by layer it piles on, thin and unnoticeable. But it keeps going until it is inches thick, compacted under its own weight, and I can’t move. If I had just thought to shake it off from time to time.

But the fall comes. That brief time when I realize the weight in the form of unrealistic expectations, goals that no longer fit with my life, sloppy habits that I picked up to get me through a tight spot but then kept. In that moment I have that brief, shining reflection that reminds me that I can make a conscious choices.

This year I have felt this coming on through the summer. I knew this would be a season of introspection and examination of a number of principles and deep core values. And I’m glad I can do it with a sense of hope.