Fall moments we take for granted?…
Have you noticed how much freedom and space routine and things taken for granted create in our mind? How easy it is to plan, anticipate, visualize? And how irritating, inconvenient, chaotic it is when ad hoc, unexpected things happen? Nature seems to feel the same way.
I remember when I knew what kind of weather to expect in my three-onth summer vacation… Let me explain: high school summer vacation, and it was decades ago. It would be warm, magnificent blue skies, the temperature would remain constant and the rain would stay away, joining us maybe once in a while with one or two drops just to spoil the fun. I could go to the beach every single day if I wanted to. And I did — well, almost every day — , together with my best friend, hitchhiking; at the time on that spot, it was very normal, safe, lots of fun and we would get to choose our favorite car…
I also remember what I would be seeing in the woods during the months of October and November: the colors, the sharp diagonal rays of the Sun crossing through the leaves at their different coloring stages; the light exquisite, its photogenic qualities reflected in the captures I would take with my old camera — later with my new smartphone, now vintage and struggling to capture the new versions of the four seasons; the scent that would trigger a kind of comfort, and sometimes, some sneezing and watery eyes. Expected. Normal for this time of the year. My favorite. The daylight, shrinking at this point, would daunt some with its “shorter” and darker days ahead, but it would also bring coziness — “hygge” as they call it in Denmark, the country of coziness.
Well, I guess shorter daytime in the fall is something we can take for granted for quite a while still in this infinite finite existence of our Universe. However, other behaviors are less and less certain not only because of the natural evolution, but mainly because of the acceleration at which it progresses. A fact with a human signature on it. A signature that keeps recurring stubbornly in a paradoxal behavior: while signing to preserve, improve and even prolong life on this planet, it draws a deeper and darker place for that same life it wants to preserve.
All life reacts. If the weather changes — consequence of that hurried up evolution — life’s routine changes with it. Sometimes in chaos, in a swirling effect. After all, Life took it for granted that every single year particular things would happen: rain would fall; snow would cover the highest lands; ice would shape magnificent icebergs in the ocean and form glaciers; the Sun would warm and feed, energizing new life in its birth and growth, while providing pleasurable moments to humans thirsty for warm rays of Sun on their skin and refreshing dives in clear waters. All this according to a given, ancient conventional routine, planned and anticipated moments, expected to recur year after year after year…
The freedom felt and experienced is total, amazing, providing space to live a daily life without having to think about questions such as “if” or “will it happen?” or “what will happen next year?”. Without the uncertainty of an empty or disfigured future where the routine, so granted and so grand to live in and with, no longer will exist.
As time passes, the exceptions become less exceptions and the abnormalities more like normalities. And as their frequency and intensity escalate, the impact and the changes become apparent and consequential. The routine becomes chaos, ad hoc. Reaction action. No planning, no visibility possible. Strawberries in the winter. Naked trees in the spring. Sunbathing in the fall, sunblock required. Blue skies swiftly changing into dark mountains of clouds not able to spread their contents smoothly and gradually, with magnanimous quantities of water falling on the same place mercilessly. Wildfires consuming huge areas of land for days on end, feeding off the hot Sun, dry air and strong winds, their power unmatched, not even the god of the living creatures being able to tame them, defeat them…
Some say routine is boring and takes away ambition and growth, development. Maybe at work, and again, maybe not. But in this context, in the context of the world, our world, our Earth, routine is heaven, is everything, is what keeps us alive and kicking. It’s what gives us a healthy body and mind. It’s what allows birds in the spring to make their nests and feed their hatchlings, trees to show off their soothing baby green leaves, cute young polar bears to play on sea ice … And so, so many other wonderful things… that aren’t things.
The world might have just missed a crucial opportunity at the highest level to jointly act and preserve that routine, and keep Earth, our home, alive and healthy. But we, we all have the opportunity to conscientiously act in an environmentally friendly way every single day, every single hour, at home, at work, on the way.
Pictures: Berlin and Reichswald (Germany)
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