This weekend I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in a few years. He’s 52 and recently had a health scare, which put him in a self-reflective mood. He talked about his health, his life, and how he’s re-evaluating what’s important for him to still accomplish. Since I’m 64, he was interested in how turning 60 felt, how I’m doing now, and the things I regret and I’m happy about.

My bottom line message was that my 60s have been my best decade of life so far, and that in many ways each subsequent decade of my life since early adulthood has improved. This does not mean that better and better things have occurred in my life – after all, I had many memorable ‘firsts’ in my teens and 20s, got married in my 30s, and had kids in my 30s and 40s – but that somehow as I’ve grown older, I’ve gotten better at life. I’ve grown more skilled and do less stupid, regrettable stuff, and feel happier.  

What struck me as I started answering my friend was that the exact time of year at which he asked me about my 60s – this weekend in mid-September – feels like the season that aligns with the ‘season’ of my life. This season of late summer and coming into autumn reflects my own season of being late into my career and coming into my own autumn. It felt poignant. It felt like a small manifestation of fate brought us together and moved him to ask me these questions on the very day he asked them.  

Thus, the focus of this post: the seasons of a life. Although you likely are decades younger than I, I think this post is still relevant. Everyone is in a season of their life, and knowing what the next season can bring can give you perspective on your present. It might even lead to changing what you’re doing now and deciding to do going forward.

I’m happy to get this to you before the autumn equinox. My suggestion is to mark that day, September 22. Use it to reflect on your future, on when you will be moving from the season of summer – the time of work, of growing your career, and perhaps of raising a family – into your own life’s autumn. (I’m treating a human lifetime as having four seasons, lasting from one winter solstice to the next one.)

Why My 60s Are Good

I regard myself as a somewhat melancholy person. This is not at all to mean that I am depressed. Although I suffered depression on and off from my mid-teens to my mid-20s, I haven’t been depressed since. Instead, I live in a mood of sweet melancholy, and this mood is most pronounced in autumn. Thus, autumn seems like the time of year during which my mood most attunes to the world as it is in that season. It is in autumn that I’m most attuned to the coming to be and the passing away of everything. It’s not a morbid mood, however. Rather, it’s one of the appreciation of the beauty of all things, as they are for a time, and, thus, the preciousness of it all.

What this has to do with my 60s is that my 60s have accentuated this sense of preciousness and the passage of time. It’s heightened my perception of the connection of everything to everything else. It seems that it is ‘relation,’ – the relationship between things at every level from subatomic particles to civilizations – that is the fundamental trait of the universe. Almost every day, I’m struck by a new insight into some aspect of life. I’m not claiming brilliance here. Instead, I believe every person goes through their own season of insights, just as there are times of year characterized by meteor showers. I think the stillness that characterizes autumn is conducive to the coming of such thoughts. Again, the connection: this type of thought has come to me most every autumn and now more than ever in my own autumn.

This season is also one of slowing down. I’ve always been on the go. I get bored easily and always want to explore and try new things, to push myself. Since early adulthood, I’ve had an image of myself as a spear cutting through the air. I like to make things happen.

Now, I’m mellowing out. I’m just as engaged as ever, but in a more reflective, slow, meandering way. I like to walk and ponder, have deeper conversations with people I know and new people I meet, and sit down and read and write. I love writing because it’s a way of thinking, of sustaining thought long enough for it to show more of itself, to help me come to understand things better. I’m no longer always on the chase. My season of summer has been good to me. It’s winding down feels well-earned and even better.

Autumnal Work

As I move into autumn – in both senses – it does not mean that I will stop working. I will always work as long as I am able. It’s just that I now work more on my own terms. I feel less pressure, more space.

Just like happens in autumn, there’s a pervasive quietude that’s grown within me, a letting be, of letting myself rest in the moment as opposed to treating the present as a mere movement to the next moment and then the next and the next.

Autumnal work is apropos to physicians and other highly trained professionals. It seems a waste as you grow older to just stop doing the work that you’ve devoted decades to learning and honing. On the other hand, to continue to work with what is often a high level of ambient stress and time hunger is not a desirable way to continue to live into one’s autumn. Thus, it’s worth considering how to continue to engage in meaningful work, but to do so in your own way and at your own pace. This is what work in autumn should be. And, to add, yes, autumnal work unfolds at a slower pace, but it may be as valuable or more valuable than the work of summer.

I’ve talked here about the contemplative mood I enter in autumn. I’ve seen it in many others, too. This turn in thought is one of deepening and also of distancing from the incessant daily noise. The thoughts themselves seem to inhabit a quieter and vaster space. They roam. As part of this – and here I do not mean to be morbid, because I’m not – but the work of this season of life is preparing to die, for some this ‘preparation’ comes a mere months or weeks prior to death, and for others not at all. For others still, it starts earlier, decades earlier. To do the work of preparing to die means to try to live in a way that is worthy of the gift of life. Considered in this way, living in the light of one’s demise is what gives purpose and direction to each day, a day that is to be cherished and ‘praised’ through one’s wholesome deeds.

So, I invite you to look at the sunrise and/or sunset on September 22, the autumn equinox, and give yourself the (vast and still) space to think of what gifts your autumn can bring to you.

Until next time,
Dr. Jack

Language Brief

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” – George Eliot

“And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days …” – Dylan Thomas

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” – Henry David Thoreau