Behind the Puddle

I can make change considerably harder than it needs to be. Not necessarily the change itself. The part beforehand. The imagining. The worrying. The rehearsing of every possible outcome. The mental preparation for things that may or may not happen.

Sometimes I have lived through an event several dozen times in my head before it ever actually arrives. And then occasionally it doesn’t happen at all. Apparently, I prepared for nothing.

September doesn’t seem to have this problem. Autumn is coming. The days are shortening. The temperatures will change. Leaves will fall. The landscape behind the puddle will eventually look very different. 

Nothing appears to be bracing itself. The trees aren’t panicking. The birds aren’t holding emergency meetings. Pinecone has probably made preparations, although I suspect those preparations primarily involve food. Everything simply responds to what arrives.

I wonder what it would feel like to live with a little more of that. Not irresponsibly. There are things worth preparing for. Plans matter. Thinking ahead matters. Sometimes anticipating what might happen is exactly what keeps us safe. But preparation and resistance aren’t the same thing. Neither are preparation and worry.

I can prepare for winter without being angry that summer ended. I can make a difficult decision without knowing whether I will ever feel completely ready. I can acknowledge that someone is changing without demanding they return to who they were. I can recognize that my own life is becoming different without treating every change as something that needs to be fought.

Maybe peace isn’t waiting on the other side of change. Maybe peace is one of the ways we can walk through it. I think I have sometimes imagined peace as a destination. Once this is resolved, I’ll feel peaceful. Once I know the answer. Once everyone is okay. Once the decision is made. Once life settles down. But life doesn’t stay settled for very long.

Something is always arriving. Something is always leaving. Someone is always becoming. Maybe peace has to learn how to move.

Behind the puddle, autumn won’t ask summer to disappear overnight. For a while they will share the same landscape. Warm afternoons and cool mornings. Green leaves with a little yellow around the edges. Summer sounds alongside the first hints of fall.

No argument about which season is supposed to be here. Just transition. Maybe welcoming what arrives doesn’t mean I have to be excited about everything that comes next. Some things arrive that I would never invite. Peace doesn’t require me to pretend otherwise.

Maybe welcoming simply means making enough room to meet reality when it gets here. Without deciding ahead of time that I cannot handle it. Without demanding that it be different before I’ve even experienced it. Without spending all of today fighting tomorrow.

I don’t know exactly what the next season will bring. For the puddle. For the people I love. For me. But today I don’t have to know. September is still here. The puddle is still outside. There is still a chair waiting for me. And whatever comes next can arrive one day at a time. Maybe I can meet it the same way.