This is the perfect time.
The days are getting shorter, but not too short quite yet. That stifling summer air will give way to a crisp fall feel that brings the football season and vibrant foliage in tow along with plenty more good days — perhaps the best — on the golf course. Soon enough (sometimes it seems like too soon as the years pile up), a successive string of the best holidays the calendar has to offer will be here again. Class is in, we’re on the back half of another year and all is right with the world.
The seasons change, and just as we are greeted with the familiar, we change, we transform and we evolve with them.
In that spirit, we begin a new chapter, all of us in our own ways. Many of us welcome adventures that bring with them the unknown, the uncertain, the scary, but promising next chapter yet to be written. For some of us, that means a change of scenery, new people, potentially a new occupation or a fresh day-to-day routine.
That path, not yet tread upon by our own footsteps, is traversed with an open heart, an open mind, and gratitude for everything we’ve been through, the many treks and travails that preceded this one and those that will follow. Etched in our minds are the experiences of the past, the places we’ve seen and the people we’ve come to know — those who whether they knew it or not, or whether we told them, impacted us and informed the person we’ve become, and made our days a little better, a little brighter.
We don’t leave them behind, but rather, we take them with us in spirit. We cherish the love, the memories, the good times and bad, the bread we broke, the lessons we learned and, in turn, passed along to others. In the future, days, months and even years from now, our senses will spark that neuron in our brain, jumbling those fond memories to the front of our mind. We hope just maybe those same neurons spark in the minds of others.
Life is rich. It is also finite. It’s important that we make the most of the endless possibilities, the limitless potential and the vast expanse that this earthly existence has to offer, the bountiful beauty that lies ahead on the horizon — and sometimes we shake the Etch-A-Sketch and put something new on the canvas. And life inevitably goes on.
Along the way, it’s easy to get bogged down by the useless and superfluous, those things that don’t necessarily deserve our attention, undivided or otherwise — whether it’s excessive screen time on social media, day-to-day drama or political division in all its shapes and forms. We can become cynical and jaded, complacent with what should be important, what adds value to our lives and allows us to add value to others.
As easy as it is to merely say the words, or type them out, we should be optimistic, remain hopeful, wherever our varying exploits might take us. Even if we aren’t physically going somewhere new, we can shift mentally. We can listen, learn and love more. This life lasts only so long, and as a young Chicago suburbanite once said, if you don’t look around once in a while, you could miss it.
Musician Nick Cave, who lost two sons in recent years, has worked through his grief by answering the queries of others via his “Red Hand Files” website, an exercise in soul-searching and processing the gamut of emotions that make up the human condition. This week, he appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and shared his response to one particular letter from someone dealing with severe emptiness and cynicism, and the fear they might pass those feelings on to their own young son.
“Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned,” Cave replied. “(It) makes demands upon us and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position; it is an adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like … keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in.
“In time, we come to find this is so.”