Slowing down with the season
Most of the leaves are off the trees, the last crops are being brought in, including this year’s bumper crop of political signs, and nature is slowing down.
In New England, things more or less still move with the seasons, but our family seems to be feeling the draw of this fall more than usual. We had a wonderful, crazy busy, summer, and had many things planned right through to Thanksgiving. Then, right after the equinox, we got slammed with a particularly nasty cold and went down like dominoes. Every trip or event we had planned ended up having to be canceled due to family illness or the weather. It took us a bit, but we finally got the message that perhaps it was more than time to slow down.
We puttered a bit around the property, simplifying any tasks we could. We made a myriad of baked goods with the overabundance of apples we had picked. We curled up with hot cocoa in front of the fire, watched movies, and turned in early. It was amazing.
How many times do we tend to just push through? We push through the fatigue, push through the illness, push through into the torrent of holiday obligations, and wake up blinking in the light of a New Year feeling a little uncertain of how we got there. And there’s no real reason for it. It isn’t at all natural. We put it on ourselves.
This time of year is for slowing down. The days are shorter, the last mad rush is done as we prepare to hunker down against the cold of the winter, and all natural things are going into rest mode. It’s easy to forget in our oh-so-“civilized” world that we are part of nature as well. That we too have a circadian rhythm that is affected by these shorter days, and that we too need rest.
We discovered that being forced to slow down can be an amazing thing if you let it happen. It’s a good time to snuggle in as a family and make plans for how to fill those long winter months. It’s a time to take stock and prioritize. It’s a time to look at what you really need to be doing and let go of things that you don’t. It’s a time to think back over the year so far, take a breath, reconnect to what you really want, and decide what comes next.
Brilliant! Just plain brilliant!