Autumn, the season that comes after summer when life is so vibrant, lush.

Growth everywhere, all actively living, expanding, achieving.

For most living things, plants or animals, spring and summer are the time for stretching out, reaching
new dimensions in space, growing into full foliage, reproducing.

The warm climate encourages on.

Then it gets colder. Autumn seeps in.

Then it gets cooler, autumn comes.

As I move through life, I see and hear more about friends or their loved ones starting to have difficulties
with their health. The strength of their bodies no longer being what they are used to be… Cancer, high
blood pressure, cholesterol, deteriorating ability to hear, to see, fading memories, senior moments…

Autumn, I too am stepping into that season with my own life cycle.

Part of me, at the beginning, feels sad.

Mortality – used to be just a word out there. Now has more texture, becoming more real. The sadness
lingers, for my family, for my friends.

I have started to count the years backwards – something like I have maybe 15 good years to go.

But the other part of me says, of all the seasons, autumn is the most colorful, most brilliant.

It carries with it deep blue sky, crisp morning air, with full spectrum of colors in red, orange, yellow,
green in the foliage.

Colder crisp air, but warm foliage colors. Maybe it is this contradicting effect that makes it so beautiful,
yet with a sense of sadness of knowing this is not forever. From this stems a deep appreciation of what
still remains.

Autumn, how beautiful you are! I would want to be like you in my later years, or even starting from
now.

When I am still capable, I can harvest my fruit, have my life shine from within as brilliant as your foliage,
as warm as your colors.

Not in a hurry to seek external validations, uses, or values,

To just enjoy the abundance of the gift of my own existence, the love from within, for friends, family, or
whoever walks into my orbit.

To enjoy the fruit of my labor in the past seasons. Whatever they may be.

In gratitude, in groundedness, in connection to the spirit, the energy in this universe… in the well being
of all the elements, seen or unseen.

To give a warm glow in love, in gratitude, in peacefulness, in unhurriedness, in appreciation, in the
beauty of all existence…

Winter, as I see you now in the season of fall, you look cold, harsh, barren.

But I imagine once I get into your realm, you’ll show me your own beauty.

Don’t really know what it can be, but I trust that life will teach me, always with the accompaniment of
love and beauty….