Holding the Moment

Autumn, that universal symbol of change, gently suggests to us that winter is on the way as the leaves turn red, and somehow, equally gently and gradually, reminds us that nothing is permanent. . . . If the seasons change this way, then everything else probably does too, so holding the moment becomes important. Each event must be savoured for what it is, and nothing can bring it back. On the personal level, as Pico Iyer notes, we should “cherish the seasons inside us,” and “seek out changelessness in change.” Or, as the 19th-century French novelist and critic Jean-Baptiste Karr famously put it, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” [“The more it changes, the more it’s the same”]. Autumn somehow reminds us of this, too; it’s the season, Iyer says, “when everything falls away,” but at the same time it will be preparing to come back.

– John Butler
Excerpted from “A Review of Autumn Light:
Season of Fire and Farewells by Pico Iyer”
Asian Review of Books
June 8, 2019

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Season of the Soul
• Autumn: Season of Transformation and Surrender
• Time to Go Inwards
• Autumnal Thoughts and Visions (2022)
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2021)
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2018)
• Autumn . . . Within and Beyond (2016)
• O Sacred Season of Autumn
• “Thou Hast Thy Music Too”
• Autumn Psalm
• “This Autumn Land Is Dreaming”
• Autumn’s “Wordless Message”
• Autumnal (and Rather Pagan) Thoughts on the Making of “All Things New”
• Brigit Anna McNeill on Hearing the Wild and Natural Call to Go Inwards

Image: Michael J. Bayly.