I’ve often wondered why people bother with flowers.
There’s all this effort about picking and buying the right flowers, bringing them home, putting them into a vase. Sure, they look great for a while, but are dead shortly after. At that point, you start the process again.
As I was pondering this, I realized I lack an appreciation for impermanence. It’s why I don’t put pictures up or think about renovating to make things more effective and aesthetically pleasing at home. I know I’ll move out at some point, so why make the effort.
But this impermanence reminds me of the how things go in life.
Life seems to break itself up naturally into different segments, which some refer to as seasons. In these seasons, things change. Sometimes slightly, sometimes in very big ways. Moving to another city or country is a big change. So is starting a new job. Getting married or having kids are included in that.
Small changes could be redecorating your apartment, meeting a new friend, or starting a new video game.
Either way, these changes bring new air to our daily routines, or break those routines completely. Sometimes they are gently brought forth by our own doing. Other times, they happen forcefully, sometimes unexpectedly.
My life started with small changes. Going from elementary school to high school. Graduating high school and starting my cooking career. Changing jobs, but always within the same area of where I grew up in. There was always a strong sense of familiarity, which is a detail I maintained as a means of control. It allowed me to comfortably engage these new variables in my everyday life.
Bigger changes did happen of course. Broken relationships and the dreams that were bundled with them, as well as starting a business. Those were the biggest seasons that came by.
Then came moving to a different country. Since then, my life has seen many seasons, each season coming more abruptly than the last.
In these times, I’ve lost my footing. I spent many hours looking back at these seasons, sometimes with envy and longing. I lay awake at night, wondering if I made the right decisions. Wondering if things were a waste of time.
My conviction these days is that these seasons, like the seasons we experience in the natural world, they come and go. And with that comes the reality that the exact season that passed, it’s not coming back. Not ever in the same way.
Saying goodbye is something that I’ve had to get used to. It’s a part of travelling and a part of wanting to experience new places. You have to say goodbye to those around you.
It’s just as important to say goodbye to different seasons in your life. But like with the people you leave behind, you take with you the lessons and the experiences that those people and that season represents. You take that with you, and you move forward. Apply what you need to in the season you are in now, and spend less time thinking about what could have been in the last season.
I’m learning right now the truth that sooner or later, this period of life I'm in will also be a past season. So I should take the time to learn what I can right now. And then, let it go.