“It was one of those perfect English Autumnal days which occur more frequently in the memory than in life.”
~~ P.D. James
Change. Sometimes it is welcomed and sometimes we fight it. September 22nd was the Fall Equinox. Depending on where you live a few days after this event we experience equal hours of light and darkness. It always takes us by surprise as we begin to hear the sounds, sights and feel of fall. The night sounds are different – the bugs seem to be louder, almost as if they too are getting the last shout out. The sky changes and even if the days are hot and humid, the nights are cool. The smell of summer is that of dewy grass, and that of autumn, is of dewy leaves.
Several years ago, I took an Aromatherapy course and was made very aware of the power of our senses and how memory provoking, smelling certain aromas can be. They can trigger the emotions of memories without even really remembering the event itself. More often then we realize, we remember the feeling of certain events, not the events themselves. When we began smelling all of the different oils in one of the classes, one essential oil came around, Cedarwood. I immediately went back to the beginning of my elementary school years and how the pencils smelled, and I even remembered how I would bite down on them and got an even bigger burst of the smell. The memory was very comforting to me, which I did not quite understand because I really did not like school. But I did love getting new school supplies. Something about the new packs of paper, pencils and pens felt promising and fresh. Or perhaps, it was simply as P.D. James put it, occurring in my memory more than in my life.
Fall especially, draws a myriad of sensations and emotions. Many people breathe a sigh of relief from the heat, and those who dread the cold, find it almost ominous and begin to predict just how cold it will be, and how much snow we will get basing it on wooly worms or how early the leaves begin to fall from the trees.
Our schedules change and we find ourselves shifting indoors, often leaving us feeling cut off and scattered, unable to finish things we start while simultaneously feeling a need or desire to do something else. Like a sudden desire to weed the yard, or clean out a drawer or closet and maybe finding something you had been looking for or something you had forgotten about, sending your mind in still in another direction for a time.
The leaves have already begun to fall, ever so gently and they will eventually hide the sidewalks and the shoulders of the roads and the pathways. How interesting it is to me that many of us like to take long drives this time of the year often to places we have not gone before. Are we just looking for a different road? Are we seeking a change of scenery?
As you make you way through the leaves this fall, take a few moments to breathe in the aroma they are offering to you. Sit with it for a few minutes. Lay down in them, maybe jump in them, but mostly embrace the change. If it is not a good feeling stay with it for a little while instead of automatically running from it and ask yourself why or trace back to the memory, then let go of the memory that is outside of yourself and try and find it inside of you, I bet you can’t — and within that discovery you will begin the process of releasing it.
Try to let it go as the leaves do from the trees. Consider the beauty in falling. We don’t become in love, we fall in love, leaving one realm of being and existence right into another often in an instant. Imagine if you can, if the trees struggled to hold on to their dying leaves, it would eventually kill the tree. By letting them go, they eventually turn back into dirt nourishing the tree providing the food for something new to grow. You can change anytime you want just by letting go of something. As the trees begin to blanket us in leaves, see it as a huge blank canvas covering up the familiar, and waiting for a new fresh scene to be painted. As we enter into a quieter time of the year and the days dim and we watch the trees change, let us remember the beauty is in the falling, and the gift of something new.
~Cynthia
