Do you ever feel like you are mourning for what was? A lost opportunity, a relationship gone sour, or the normal before corona?
I feel like this is one thing we all have in common coming on the last quarter of 2020. This year just hasn’t gone as planned! Worldwide, this is true. Individually, this is true. And the universal stuff doesn’t stop the individual stuff from happening. There are still cancer diagnoses, children growing up and pulling away, and our own personal weaknesses staring us in the face – all while dealing with the uncertainty of all that is going on around us.
I relate to the one musing in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem, The Autumn (click the link to hear it spoken by myself on my YouTube channel, or look below for the whole text), who sits in a symbolic autumn moment of her life alone with her musing heart with summertime yet on her mind. But time keeps moving forward and it is impossible to rewind time and hold onto things just as they were. We have to adapt, to move forward.
Yet it’s perfectly okay to mourn what is lost. I think it’s an important part of moving forward to let yourself feel sad that things aren’t as you planned. It is possible to feel regret and sorrow and move forward with faith and hope. The key is not getting stuck in the sorrow. We allow ourselves to feel sorrow – and hope and love and laughter. We embrace the wholeness of our world. We see the autumn season of change for what it is – a new chapter, not like the one before but full of wonderful things if we just look for them.
We have to remember that the same sky that encircled us then still encircles us today. The constant things are worth holding onto. They are worth noticing and worth appreciating.
Change happens. And autumn’s scathe that leaves injury and winter’s cold that robs our hearts of warmth are also part of the seasonal nature of life. We live through these moments in gratitude for what has been, what is (there is always something to be grateful for), and what can be. We live in these moments with courage and faith knowing, hoping, that we will come out in the spring stronger than we were before, ready for new growth and new opportunities.
If you are in a period of mourning, take heart. Seasons come and seasons go, and the unknown future may be just what you need.
Read more: What brings happiness? to see what qualities to cultivate in your life to create happiness, no matter the outward happenings.
The Autumn
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them —
The summer flowers depart —
Sit still — as all transform’d to stone,
Except your musing heart.
How there you sat in summer-time,
May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
Doth cause a leaf to fall.
Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth
That flesh and dust impart:
We cannot bear its visitings,
When change is on the heart.
Gay words and jests may make us smile,
When Sorrow is asleep;
But other things must make us smile,
When Sorrow bids us weep!
The dearest hands that clasp our hands, —
Their presence may be o’er;
The dearest voice that meets our ear,
That tone may come no more!
Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,
Which once refresh’d our mind,
Shall come — as, on those sighing woods,
The chilling autumn wind.
Hear not the wind — view not the woods;
Look out o’er vale and hill-
In spring, the sky encircled them —
The sky is round them still.
Come autumn’s scathe — come winter’s cold —
Come change — and human fate!
Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,
Can ne’er be desolate.
