A friend recently complained of what he called a seasonal disorder syndrome. He said at this time of year he becomes melancholy and depressed. He called it a seasonal disorder but, I think it may just be normal. Nothing abnormal or disorderly about it, but rather normal and completely orderly. Something to be experienced and accepted just as we accept the budding of each new spring or the exuberance of summer. This is a normal happening, an orderly transition that has been going on for eons.
Acceptance is probably the key. Feeling blue or down or depressed or melancholy is probably just normal when the leaves start to fall.
I love what Wendell Berry wrote about this.
He said:
When I rise up
let me rise up joyful like a bird.
When I fall
let me fall without regret like a leaf.
I'm not entirely certain, but I think Wendell might have been influenced by the writings of Marcus Aurelius who wrote in his book THE MEDITATIONS the following quotes I lifted:
Among the foremost things which you will look into are these two: external matters do not affect the soul but stand quietly outside it, while true disturbances come from the inner judgment; second, that everything you see has all but changed already and is no more.
The universe is change, life is understanding.
Death like birth is a mystery of nature.
The life of every man is short and yours is almost finished while you do not respect yourself but allow your happiness to depend upon the souls of others.
A man is not easily found to be unhappy because he takes no thought for what happens in the soul of another; it is those who do not attend to the disturbances of their own soul who are inevitably in a state of unhappiness.
Discard the thought of injury, and the words “I have been injured” are gone; discard the words “I have been injured,” and the injury is gone.
The nature of the universally beneficial has inevitably brought this about.
Everything which happens is right.
Many grains of incense on the same altar; one was cast earlier, the other later, but it makes no difference.
Everything which is in tune with you, O Universe, is in tune with me. Nothing which happens at the right time for you is early or late for me. Everything, O Nature, which your seasons produce is fruit to me. All things come from you, exist in you, and will return to you.
Most of our words and actions are unnecessary and whoever eliminates these will have more leisure and be less disturbed.
Whether a thing is bad for you does not depend upon another man’s directing mind, nor upon any turn or change in your environment. Upon what then? Upon that part of you which judges what is bad. Let it make no such judgment and all is well.
Time is a river of things that become, with a strong current. No sooner is a thing seen than it has been swept away, and something else is being carried past, and still another thing will follow.
Everything that happens is as customary and understandable as the rose in springtime or the fruit in summer. The same is true of disease, death, slander and conspiracy, and all the things which delight or pain foolish men.
What happens next is always intimately related to what went before.
Journey then through this moment of time in accord with nature, and graciously depart, as a ripened olive might fall, praising the earth which produced it, grateful to the tree that made it grow.
All is but thinking so.
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