Behind the Puddle

Nature seems remarkably unconcerned with where one thing ends and another begins. I am much more interested in clear distinctions. I prefer a beginning, middle, end, and a clear indication that something is finished before the next thing begins. I like knowing where I am in the story. The puddle doesn’t seem to care.

September arrived while summer was still here, and the days began shortening long before anyone was ready to call summer over. The young geese were growing while they were still being treated like babies. The mallards changed a little every day. Then, suddenly, I looked at them and wondered when they had gotten so big.

One thing doesn’t stop so another can begin. They overlap. Maybe that’s the rhythm. We tend to think of beginnings and endings as opposites. One means something is starting, while the other means something is finished. But the longer I watch the seasons, the less separate they seem.

The beginning of autumn is also the ending of summer, and the end of childhood is the beginning of something else. Leaving one place means arriving somewhere, even if that somewhere doesn’t feel like home yet. A changing relationship may represent the end of the way we once knew each other and the beginning of learning who we are now.

Even grief carries this strange rhythm. Something has ended that we never wanted to end, and yet our life continues. It continues not because what was lost mattered less or because we have “moved on,” but because somehow we have to learn how to carry what ended into a life that is still beginning every morning. I think that’s one of the harder rhythms to trust.

We like beginnings when we chose them. New opportunities, relationships, homes, and plans can make those beginnings feel exciting. But beginnings born from endings can feel very different. Sometimes we don’t want the next chapter. We want the last one back. Nature doesn’t ask us to pretend otherwise.

The trees don’t rush to autumn because summer was bad. Summer doesn’t become meaningless because September arrived. One season becomes part of the next. Nothing needs to be rejected for something else to begin.

Maybe our lives work that way too. We carry people, places, lessons, stories, traditions, things someone taught us, ways we were loved, and even versions of ourselves we no longer are. An ending doesn’t erase what came before. A beginning doesn’t require us to forget it.

Behind the puddle, I can already see little hints of what comes next while much of what I loved about summer is still here. Both are true. Something is ending, something is beginning, and today exists somewhere between them.

Maybe rhythm isn’t about knowing exactly when to let go and exactly when to move forward. Maybe it is learning to live inside that overlap. It asks us to appreciate what is still here, notice what is arriving, and trust that life has always contained both. There is an ending, a beginning, and another ordinary day connecting the two.