For most of my life I have liked the winter months more than the summer; I’m not sure why, but I have felt more comfortable in this space of quieting and coziness. I am grateful that I live in a place where the season is not extreme, and circumstances that allow it to be comfortable. Interestingly though, this year, for the first time in my over fifty years I am feeling a bit restricted by the short days. This is literal and metaphorical I know: there is a lot that I want to do, a lot I enjoy doing, and not as much time as I will need to do it all. So how do I do what I can well, and accept what I cannot with gentleness and humility.

There is a part of me that feels like I am giving up a little when I don’t push myself to do one more thing, stay up one more hour, or get up a little earlier. I could do more with each day. Maybe. There have been times when I have done that and it doesn’t end so well for my body or my spirit. It takes quite a while in life to find yourself in a place of understanding that it isn’t all going to get done and that happens right about when you realize how much more you would like to do. At least the is what I am thinking now, what I feel like I am coming to understand, and how I am growing in appreciating what I feel like I am really good at and what I can let go of chasing. I am literally reminded of this each day this time of year when the sky starts to darken at 4:30 and I have yet to do the whatever five things still on the list that require daylight.

I know I don’t want a perpetual summer. As much as we like to think of that season as a time for carefree play, I think it feels more like a space for production and growth, and that can be exhausting. I suppose that is the miracle of these cycles that we have done nothing to create, and often don’t appreciate. To every thing there is indeed a season, in the year and in our lives, and in a year of our lives. Most of us do most of the same things every day whatever the season and so the shifts in available light, in the cue to rest and quiet or expand and grow are missed. I have the same tasks in the house most of the year, the same responsibilities to care for what needs caring, the same work even if the projects change, and so it is hard to be comfortable in a time that demands we release some of the to dos because they just can’t practically be done.

And yet in that release of forcing I think we find an expansion of potential. Of course that is exactly the point: it is not a brilliant thought to observe the miraculous lessons of the natural world and the spiritual truth revealed in that. We are not meant to be the same every day, we are not meant to always be in a space of expansion and growth, it is not sustainable and it is not healthy. The lesson for me is that I can’t do the same things every day or every year. Some places make this obvious with the weather: you can’t work in the garden if the soil is frozen and covered with snow. Where I live it can be confusing and then frustrating when you can’t do it all, all the time. And that is the important metaphor for our lives, for our work, for our ambitions and goals. We are meant to have quiet, to have seasons of less, to rest, to wait, to gather inward.

I am personally feeling the discomfort of that truth right now as I move into a season of my being that demands change and a softening of expectation in a very explicit way. I know that there is still much to do, much that I can do, and much that I will do – but perhaps not all in this moment or in the way I am accustomed to. I also know that the light will change again and there will be time to expand, it will just look different, as it always does and always has even when I have failed to notice. And maybe that is the real lesson here, the real awareness: I am noticing in a way I haven’t before and I am grateful for each moment knowing how quickly they change.