I took this photo as I was leaving the farm last weekend to drive back to Sydney. Against the backdrop of the inky night sky the new blossoms of the Manchurian pear trees looked simply magical. The snow white blossoms had just appeared from nowhere all of a sudden…
As I so often do, I spent the drive back just thinking. Marvelling at how Mother Nature knew, after such a brutally cold winter, that the warmth of spring was just around the corner.
Just a few days later the trees were in full blossom, defying the winter hibernation and singing the praises of their new growth from the mountaintops.
The thing I loved most when we first bought our farm was experiencing first hand the changing seasons. In the city, the air-conditioned offices and buses and cars and apartments, it’s possible to get through a year with the same clothes and shoes. In the countryside though, to everything (turn turn turn) there is a season. There’s no avoiding it.
For a person who grew up on the land in the countryside, the great outdoors and the seasons were second nature to me. But something happens when you move away to the city, build a professional career and – to a certain extent – lose touch with that reality.
When I entered the world of the high-rise office I became conditioned – productively, spiritually and even climatically – to be constant. To deliver the same, achieve the same all year round. Year in, year out.
But that’s just not reality for complexity of human beings. To be a happy member of our race we need time to “be”. And that means respecting the seasons of our lives.
My life today – with one foot in the city and the other on the farm – is really an entirely new way of life for me compared to my high-rise alpha world. Not every day as productive as it once was, at least in ways that are easy to measure. Not every deadline gets met, at least the first time round.
For in the real world, timing is everything, and every thing has a season. Every now and then I like to take some time to ask myself:
Which season am I in now?
What does it have to offer that the past ones didn’t?
How can I work with this season to be at my best?
I’m firmly in spring now, awaiting with anticipation the new growth and energy about to burst into life. Excited at what might come along next. Ready for challenge and inspired to create new opportunities.
What season are you in now? Is it a good time and place to be.
Is the season turning now into new beginnings, or still steady and waiting?
Turn, turn, turn,
Jen xo
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