The Subtle Light of Fall

You know how the light changes in the fall? It gets a more golden-y, warm hue that can't help but induce feelings of pumpkins on doorsteps and baked squash and nostalgia for the simplest of things.

For me it feels more and more like things that are farther and farther away. Life has grown darker, harder, and infinitely more complex than I would have wished for (and still have mixed feelings about.) The complexity brings a richness and a depth of understanding that could never have been found inside of the worlds that I used to live in. And that complexity is tangled with a pain and sorrow and a struggle to know what to do with the way that life has changed.

Walking through the woods, I'm noticing just the subtlest, faintest tint of that familiar fall warmth. It still feels mostly like summer, and many people outside probably don't see that shift just yet, but I do. I'm sensitive to those subtleties. Especially when they sadden me. The simple things that I search for in that light, that I long for to soothe me, feel out of reach.

There are new joys, new comforts, new mountains to climb and things to learn. Yet I realize that life has definitively turned the page on a chapter that I hadn't realized yet I wasn't quite ready to finish. I feel sad inside for that nostalgia.

But I am not in yesterday. Not anymore. There is only one direction to move, and that is forward.

Maybe in letting go of the things that I want to hang on to, the change doesn't have to feel quite so bad.