Finding hope in fall

Posted by admin on Nov 5, 2008 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

Although I am a proponent of summer tans, I love spring blossoms, and I really don’t think there is anything quite like curling up with a cup of tea in front of the fire after a cold rainy winter day, it is the autumn in particular that I have come to love the most.

The air is crisp and the smells are sweet. The trees’ magical colours flood my vision, and the leaves crunch pleasantly beneath my feet as I shuffle along in my new boots. The memories of my childhood are pungent and clear as I pull on a sweater and walk out into a brisk and sunny day. The autumn winds sweep in the feeling of change just as they chase the summer warmth out. However, it is the feeling of hope and newness flitting through the air, in particular, that captures my fancy about the autumn.
“Hope?!” you say. “Everything is dying, we have to go back to school, its cold outside – there is nothing hopeful about that!” Yet still, I maintain that autumn is the most hopeful time of year.

I once read that autumn is like New Years without the turkey leftovers. Unlike New Years, autumn really is the beginning of something new: it is marked by the beginning of a season, often a transition in jobs or the start of school, the end of summer romances and, at the very least, the changing of your skin from a golden color to its normal pale self. With the beginning of this newness, we actually have the chance to choose to be new as well. Everything from the weather to the scenery is demanding a change, so why not make one?

Everywhere I look in the autumn I see change – a physical manifestation reminding me of the inward possibility for beautiful change in my own life – and I am haunted by the words of Ghandi: “We must become the change we want to see.” I am acutely aware that while I may talk the talk about wanting to see beautiful change in this world, I am not walking the walk. I am not part of any beautiful change.
More than anything, I desire to change the world. But the truth I have come to realize this autumn is if I can’t even change the little things in my own life in order to become a more beautiful person and impact the people I interact with daily, how can I change the world to become a more beautiful place? Thus, in my last autumn of my undergraduate career, I have finally made a decision: this autumn is the autumn when I become the person I was made to be. I have made the decision to change, to set specific goals and specific measures for myself, and to become the person I have always wanted to be.

Broadly speaking, I want to be better. I want to listen more, be more joyful, be less lazy, change my attitude towards God and others, judge less, be kinder and have a softer heart to those hurting. Each of these categories has specific measurable goals that I am trying to meet. I want to love those I encounter the way Jesus would have loved them. I want to love myself better and be the person He created me to be.

All of us want to make changes in our life. Every one of us has the potential to be even greater than who we already are: to be more, to do more and to give more. If you feel that any of those things are true, then why not make this autumn the time you decide to become the person you were made to be? Decide that your daily encounters with others are going to be the pattern you set for how you begin to change the world.

It’s autumn: all around you everything is changing and there is hope, there is newness and, if nothing else, there is the knowledge that at least one other person out there is trying to make a change and is cheering for you to succeed in making the changes you have always wanted to make. So why not do it now, when everything around you is calling for a change? Be the change you want to see, starting from the inside out.