This Sunday marked the beginning of autumn. The equinox tipped the balance, almost imperceptible yet undeniable. The air changes, the light shifts, and the leaves begin to bow toward the earth. We watch the trees and think we are witnessing a loss, as if nature itself were grieving. Yet if the tree could speak, it would not say it is losing. It would say it is transforming.
The tree does not cling. It does not resist the law of time. It releases, with a simplicity that escapes us. The leaves that fed it all summer are no longer needed; they must fall so that the sap can gather elsewhere, deeper within. It is survival, but it is also wisdom. The tree accepts what we spend our lives fearing: letting go in order to live on.
This serenity in the face of loss unsettles us. We, humans, have turned detachment into torment, as if existence depended only on what we can hold on to. The tree shows us otherwise. True energy does not lie in what we keep but in what we allow to fall away. Its greatness is not in its flamboyant crown, but in the invisible trust of its roots.
And there is a haunting beauty in this moment of shedding. The leaves do not fall dull and silent; they blaze. On the edge of the drop, they give themselves with more intensity than in the height of summer. As if life, in retreat, wanted to remind us that there is splendor in farewell, nobility in release. It is not death, but transfiguration.
Yet autumn is not only about loss. It also speaks of time’s long arc. The tree does not live on the scale of a season. It carries the memory of decades, sometimes centuries. Each autumn is just one chapter in a much greater story. Where we dramatize each change, the tree moves within a continuity that surpasses us. Perhaps this is what moves us most: a patience beyond the human, free from haste.
There is also the matter of transmission. The fallen leaves do not vanish. They become humus, they enrich the soil, they prepare new life. What we see as disappearance is in truth circulation. The tree is never only itself; it belongs to a cycle that includes earth, air, water, and the seeds of generations to come.
And what about our own inner autumns? Our mind is like a magnifier, enlarging whatever it focuses on. If we dwell on fear and loss, we inflate them until they smother us. But if we choose to place our attention on gratitude, on the seasons we have already lived — work completed, health preserved, journeys taken, discoveries made within ourselves — then life itself will bring us more of what we already honor. The tree lets go of its leaves, and we can let go of our worries. The tree feeds the soil, and we can feed our spirit through simple daily rituals of focus and gratitude, turning autumn into a beginning rather than an end.
Translated freely into English, with care and gratitude for the subtle help of AI in keeping the sense alive.
