Transition

This is a moment of transition.

Stop for a moment and see if you can feel it.

Fall has begun, and with it, the first wafts of cool air. The mornings now darker, while sun sets in the evening much earlier.

The fall equinox is a moment where night and dark come into balance, twelve hours of each. Globally, this is a moment where northern and southern hemispheres receive the same amount of light.

Shana Tova (Happy New Year) to those celebrating Rosh Hashanah, a transition to a new year in the Jewish calendar.

And now, good people, a chance to look inward to our own points of transition.

Yesterday and all of the yesterdays it represents, now a thing of the past. 

All of it serves as the kindling for the fire that we will light today, as we transition to tomorrow and all of the tomorrows it represents.

Those twigs of yesterday provide fuel for the fire. And some things just need to burn, so that we can move forward.

Through the smoke, two questions waft into our vision.

How do you want to be?

Who do you want to be?

These are the simple and quite profound questions that ground all transitions. The caterpillar surely feels the gravity of these questions as they transition to butterfly. The tadpole similarly confronts them as they think of the frog they are meant to be.

And yet, we often skip the How and Who aspects of transition, distracted by the What. As in “What is on my plate for the rest of this week?” and “What is my to-do list for the rest of the month?”

My hope is that we make time and space for the How and Who questions, allowing them to ground and inform the What aspect of our metamorphosis into tomorrow’s version of ourselves.

Take time to write/reflect/draw/pray/move today as you consider How and Who you want to be.

In doing so, you are already transitioning.