A Passing Season…

As we see a passing season, we sometimes seem to want to hold it harder to make up for some things we have not done. Sometimes we yearn to recover lost time, to go back to our youth, or some period of the past, to live it over, But Longfellow said something along these lines:

“So nature deals with us, and takes away our playthings one by one, and by the hand leads us to rest.”

Or as another poet put it:

“For I am haunted night and day

By all the deeds I have not done.

O unattempted loveliness!

O costly valor never won!”

In this restless reaching back, some make the mistake of feeling that they can find spring in autumn. Both seasons are beautiful, but they are different. And calmly we should learn the virtue of quiet consistency, and not to let ourselves be put into panic.

In writing On Tranquillity of Mind Seneca said: “What you need . . . is not what you have already left behind, . . . but that which comes last confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on the right path, and not roaming in every direction . . . .”

“The art of living,” said Charles Langbridge Morgan, “does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mood of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; for happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up.”

In short, there is a time for all things. Seasons pass; periods of life pass. Rather than trying to seize things out of season we would do well to live a life consistent with each season, developing virtue, patience, love, and family loyalty, the doing of duty, and finding happiness in the realty of what is, what must be done, and what can properly be realized and reached for, in character and good conscience, as we move through time and swiftly to eternity.