The sun had moved three holes to the south and was setting in a hurry. In the United States of America, it was Labor Day 2024. Not officially, yet emotionally, another summer was in the books. The signs of the seasonal transitions were unfolding right in front of him, and he was reminded that the earth continues to rotate like it has for billions of years. The workers were throwing the cover over the pool in the backdrop of twilight. The spattering of golfers was still swinging at the little white ball, squeezing every drop out of summer’s sweet, but limited, juice. The singing peepers of August peak in early September with their loudest calls as the alluring stillness of the early fall dusk hung soft and low catching stardust. Labor day represents so much to the American psyche. The celebration of American Labor Unions and workers was the intent of the national holiday created by congress in 1872. The holiday has morphed into a day all children dread: the end of long warm hazy days, and the beginning of the year’s work ahead. For himself Labor Days of recent years were mostly filled with a melancholy of a missed placed youth when he convinced himself to abandon ties to any responsibility. Most of us want to hang on to the dream of summer as long as we can because we know summer is the coolest and smoothest in the season business. In many ways the beginning of September presents an internal signal to move southward and execute a transition.
When the September bells begin to ring, we are left with no more time for “what if’s”, it is time to muster thoughts of what is. Letting go of clanking skeletons is not a job for summer. We usually collect more distractions, then insist on clinging, then lamenting. The days are getting longer as our memories get a bit shinier and lucid. We try to remember the kind of Septembers when we were winners in the seasons in the sun. The kind of Septembers when our dreams were still fresh and there was still plenty of room to dream new ones. While it is nice to remember we can’t forget to let go. Turning to autumn the questions we have let linger quickly get pushed out of the recesses of our mind and into the present. So, we go back to our lives after the long sun sets of the endless summer. We go back to school, to work, all the way back to all the machinations that somehow become the google search of how we define ourselves. The autumn is the time to push forward and let go of the travails, and the personal triumphs. “Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach , the summer is out of reach.” Don Henley, said it as well as I’ve heard, telling the story of the young man cruising the empty highway road, not looking back at what was just left behind. In today’s media’s maladies of cancel culture leaving your friends behind, both by decision and by natural causes, is a part of everyday routine . On life’s chapter of “letting go” September metaphors are much gentler than the frigid January’s stare through a pane window. There are many summers when your team is not charging for the pennant. There are summer’s you didn’t catch the girl, or the perfect wave. There are the summers your best friend moves never to be seen again. In this era of e-mail, social internet contact, and the constant reacquaintance s of “old” friends, we eventually learned why we had not been in contact for years.
Summer is the one season we don’t want to fade away. We appreciate the memories of past summers, and how they let us remember those moments we were at our best. That first Sunday after the traditional Labor Day Weekend Show the model cars and the open convertibles flood the road showing signs that puts the past into perspective. Going back to school is on the minds of students everywhere, even the ones with degrees. We have a new season to start over and make our own movie, with ourselves as an improvement from our old stale character. In the math classes the algebra teacher is changing numbers into letters, while the history teacher drones on with a manipulated and coerced confession regarding stories of America’s glory. In the fall our psyche wants to take us back to long days and star filled nights. The fall waits for us to make another decision from the large bin of the options that remain. We try to hang on despite knowing the best route is to let it go. Whether it is letting go of a summer love, or the great trip from which we really didn’t want to return from, the autumn opens the door to adjustment and reflection. It is not just a seasonal change but the slow morphing of our souls that often coincides with the seasons of our lives. Fall has arguably the most spectacular color changes and temperature fluctuation of any of the seasons. The fall of our lives is when we blossom in soft twilight while subtlety preparing for the inevitable darkness.
The motorized car was making its way up the steep drive. Two weeks of total escape had come to an end, and he was ready to plan for the details of the next move. The approaching fall, for the first time, there was no school, no career, and not a rationale in sight to not getting moving. In our conscious minds we keep going back to two places: the comfort zone, or our drifting zone. It is pure human nature to drift back to a time when our tasks and aims weren’t as specific, when we didn’t understand that someday we would have to prove our worth to ourselves. Sometimes it takes a call from a friend. “Hey, what you got cooking,’ he wasn’t used to the phone’s ring these days because his machine was mostly on airplane mode. Or hiding in the drawer. “I haven’t seen anything from you in a while. What are you working on? Since the summer began, he had been negotiating a deal, the kind that requires a “tic for tat”, but he tried hard not to discuss his work until it was complete. ‘I had been thinking about a serious piece on education, or maybe just an opinion piece on the condition of America’s psyche. The summer is stuck in my head, it’s time to let go of this comfort zone I have settled into.’ There was no reply from the other side of the air but probably a sarcastic deep breath. There have been so many deals that we make with ourselves, and others, in this tumultuous ride of life. There is a time for plotting our paths towards a direction of something different. Once we’re ready to defeat procrastination it becomes time to execute. This fall was a crossroad filled with the appreciation of all that had gone before, but now it was time to leave it all behind. What was done was done and all that was left was where he still stood.
In the end I do believe we all have a purpose, although it is clear most people have no desire to acknowledge that fact. Isn’t it our responsibility to pursue a purpose? Or are we just living to get by. There is only one person who can develop and understand your purpose. The Socratic philosophers debate the parameters of man’s individual purpose, but they do not argue that pursuit of meaning is the only road to a fulfilled life. Are you a teacher, a healer, a thinker, of maybe just a simple bloke only trying to get along? Somewhere in the autumn air of the fall we pause and wonder. It is about acceptance; “nothing last forever” and the practical realization that every summer dream does not have a fairy tale ending. If you can make it through the rainy days, you might find yourself alone in a place where you can attempt to make sense of what the trip has been all about. By deep middle age our road has been randomly traveled and the last act is playing out. Of course there is still time to change script, to develop a new character of our own creation. Then one bright day it is a clear blue September morning where the sky is so blue you forget the whole summer was anything but beautiful and perfect. What is left behind are all the broken parts that are left for us to mend. So September hoodwinks us into a false sense of security that summer will return and the other three seasons were simply filling insignificant space. But the appreciation is in still being in the game knowing how hard we played and that we earned one more glorious season.
A blink of the eye and it was September 11th 23 years later. The infamous day when loaded commercial airlines came out of the clear New York sky acting as mass bombs setting off an inferno that historians will someday in the future declare as the trigger for World War III. One moment we were all in the primes of our life and suddenly the safety of the American Dream was in doubt. Many of us were young and hungry becoming the masters of our own universe. The next moment young men and women were looking down from a 104-story towering inferno with only two options left for the short remainder of their lives: burn, or jump. The walk up the steps to the Sojourner Truth Library felt like a therapeutic stroll you take when you are in the beginning states of chasing your new dream. It was time for letting go of a past that we tend to cling so tightly to. The wiser can dry their eyes and accept the gifts of our youth are only there to borrow. At some point the chapter of transformation must end up with a sense of purpose, and it becomes a priority to execute that agenda we want to continue to remain relevant to ourselves. We dreamed our dreams; we made it through the rain, and we are left standing with the energy to write the final chapter. We learn it is appropriate to kiss the summer goodbye and point us towards the fall. To a time in our lives when the September twilight paints the picture of what could be heaven. All of whatever it is we hang onto has already happened; It’s gone. Let it go.
