Autumn

All year a tree spends its time nourishing its leaves and fruit but come autumn, it must shed some of these leaves to preserve itself and ensure its own health and survival. Not all these leaves are dead but they are abondoned by the tree for they take up too much of its precious, and now scarce energy.

I like to think of people as trees (moving trees!), the branches and leaves being the bonds, friendships and relationships we form with other people. There comes an autumn in our lives too, more than one in fact, we we must break some of these bonds, part ways from those who were once friends.

It is not painless though. For they are not dead leaves but real living people that one has invested time and effort in. To consciously cut someone off takes as much out of me as does making a relationship, what ever its nature, work. But the breaking off is as necessary for the heart as for the head, for I must now stand up to what I believe in. Even in a place where judgments are never made, in a society free of rectitude, I must still make my judgment and not fall prey to hypocrisy of the world that I have inhabited this past year.

The Autumn now fades slowly as the last of the leaves of the year past fall making way for the beauty of clarity and sparseness. New leaves will bloom in the springs to come.