Autumn is a time to reflect

Autumn carries romantic images for many of us at least through the Indian summer season. In fact, many feel it is their favorite time of the year, warm days and cool evenings entice us into a sort of complacency.

We’ve grown through the years to appreciate that Frank Sinatra’s voice crooning those lyrics, “The falling leaves drift by my window.... the falling leaves of red and gold.” 

Autumn is a time to re-examine things that we get caught up in - the minutia of our daily lives often overwhelms the moment and the big picture. The season deserves a closer look at simplicity. 

I was driving along a rural road in a near-by state. I was on my way to a local nursery and had traveled this route many times. The black asphalt pavement met the vast field that overflowed for miles, creating a smooth pattern and transition.

The field was overcome with wildflowers, random weeds and tall, swaying grasses. From a distance, it looked like a quilt. I had passed it many times when I visited the area.

But on this day, with the autumn stripping the ambiance bare, I noticed something that had never caught my eye before. Standing high right in the middle of this field was a chair. It was made of wood and looked weathered and worn. It had no arms, just a spindled back with empty slats in between. Without the crop that had grown this summer, the chair was a dichotomy of reason and rational. How did it get there and what purpose did it server? Did anyone ever sit on it and why would you have this furniture in the middle of the field? 

It made you wonder. And it occurs to you the more you question it that perhaps sometimes there are no answers. It just is. That’s the thing about life, you have to accept and a solitary thought may bring you around to seeing a simple item, and it might make you believe it’s just every day that counts. 

It doesn’t have to be a chair it could be that red balloon that escaped and is flying high in the sky. No one is around to claim it. The balloon just soars and bounces over and under the horizon, But where did it come from and how did it find this new freedom? Will it carry itself over the ocean and then just plummet or will it keep on going? Your eye watches it until it disappears out of sight and out of mind. But just for a moment you took yourself out of your own routine to smile and appreciate the flow and wind swept red balloon. How great is that. No questions, no answers, just an existence. 

I see clothes hanging on a line outside a house on those rural back roads. You can almost smell the fresh air clinging around the material. The bareness of autumn allows that image to protrude through the scenery you once sped past without a backward glance.

The simplicity of autumn brings old-fashioned remembrances filtering back through your mind. For autumn has no pretenses, no fake ambitions. Its cousin, the winter is around the corner, so autumn will let you enjoy some diffuse color, some sun and some questions without answers. 

Not to be maudlin, but often we need to slow down, take stock in whatever is around and yes, count our blessings. Now is the perfect time. In life, very often there are no obvious answers. So let those autumn leaves fall and drift by your window.