There’s a reason we stop and notice the trees this time of year.
They’re changing.
The green that seemed permanent all summer gives way to reds, oranges and golds, and somehow the change makes them more beautiful, not less.
I’ve been thinking about that lately.
This month I finish my latest six-month round of chemotherapy. I’m grateful to reach that finish line, but I also find myself wondering what the next season looks like. After months of treatments, appointments and planning life around how I might feel on a given week, I’m ready to hit the reset button a little.
Maybe that’s one of the lessons of getting older. Life keeps changing, and we keep learning how to change with it.
Our October cover profile, Steve Straughn, is a pretty wonderful example.
At 71, Steve has already lived through plenty of chapters—45 years in healthcare, service in the Navy, loss, finding love again, retirement, a move to Pike Road and becoming part of a new community. Yet he’s still adding chapters. He recently joined a band and is playing music again. He serves through Kiwanis, explores Alabama backroads with his wife, Lee, spends time with grandchildren and remains genuinely curious about what he might discover next.
Steve says aging well means “squeezing out every drop of life this world has to give, while you still can.”
I understand that sentiment more today than I once did.
Greg Budell is navigating change too, experimenting with his own Johnny Carson-inspired version of retirement by finally giving himself Friday afternoons off. He’s discovering that learning how to slow down can be almost as difficult as learning how to keep going.
Jeff Barganier takes us into the mountains, down a winding road and toward whatever might be around the next curve. And Grumpy But Grateful finds some wisdom beneath all those falling leaves—once the neighborhood men finish blowing them back and forth across each other’s property.
Maybe October is a good reminder that change doesn’t always mean something is ending.
Sometimes it means something new is taking shape.
There are seasons for pushing hard and seasons for recovering. Seasons for building and seasons for enjoying what we’ve built. Seasons for holding on and seasons for letting a few things fall away.
The leaves seem to understand that.
I’m trying to learn it too.