By Dr. Jim Bailey
In late August, I was in the mountains of North Carolina and, though it was still summer, the mornings were fall-like, with temperatures in the 50s and highs around 80. Autumn is my favorite season, and I could see the gold of summer afternoons being replaced by the silvery hue of fall. I know nature was teasing me, and the next week the summer heat returned. Still, it was a nice reprieve. The weekend was a gift – a well-timed and deeply appreciated something from someone who knows and cares about me because I, too, had been going through a seasonal change.
We don’t usually think about our lives consisting of seasons and rhythms – well, not in a personal sense. We may look forward to the things the seasonal calendar will bring – fall football and pumpkin spice, Christmas in winter, flowers in springtime, and weddings and vacations in summer – but we seldom think of our lives having rhythms, chapters, or transitions. Not in present tense, at least.
Past tense is different. When we reflect on the past, we tend to knit events and experiences by the threads that connect them, then suddenly, unintentionally, we perceive themes. We link events of our lives into “childhood,” “college,” “military service,” “love attained,” “love lost,” “adventures,” “tragedies,” “parenthood,” “empty-nesting,” “caregiving,” “achievements,” “loss and infirmity,” and more – giving names to the seasons and chapters of our lives. We tend to think of the past in seasons and chapters.
So, it’s surprising that we don’t usually think about our current circumstances and future lives this way. Though we intuitively understand the seasonality of life, we don’t ask friends and loved ones, “In what season (or chapter) of life do you find yourself right now?” Nor do we ask ourselves, while amid difficulties and hardships, “What’s the theme of this chapter in which I find myself?”
It helps if you recognize you are living a story. This summer, I watched a documentary on the film Forrest Gump; a metaphor for life-as-story if ever there was one. The feather seen flitting on the breeze at the beginning and end of the film, and the iconic line “Life is like a box of chocolates” can lead you to think the chapters of Forrest’s life are coincidental intersections of fate and circumstance. But the continuous positive impact of Forrest’s life on others’ reveals a larger theme or purpose to his seemingly random story.
Your life is a story, and whether it’s a story worth telling or sharing is, in large part, up to you. If it stays alone, beginning and ending as only your story, then it can only be a small story, but if it intersects and joins a larger and grander story, then it also can be large and grand. (My heart breaks for people who are content to live small, uninteresting stories.)
If your life is like any of the great stories, it’s comprised of chapters where the hero (you) sets a goal, gets prepared for the challenges to come, faces – and hopefully overcomes – those challenges, and recovers from the challenges. Great stories always follow this arc and rarely have chapters of complete inactivity. Along the way, the hero herself or himself is (subtly or dramatically) changed by the seasonal process so that the person who returns home at the story’s end is different from the one who left home at its beginning. For better or for worse, stories are always about change.
While hiking that August weekend, I met two girls and a guy, around 20 years old, sitting on a log in the woods and engaged in thoughtful conversation. I introduced myself and asked what they’d been discussing as I came up the trail. They said they were talking about their respective college majors and whether they had chosen “the right path” for themselves. What followed was a 45 minute conversation about how each of them is wired, what they want most in their lives, and what those things say about their vocational choices.
Although they didn’t know it, they’re heroes in a preparation chapter who happened to meet a white-haired and bearded old man walking in the woods who, in turn, gave them some insights for their journey. I, on the other hand, was in a recovery chapter and badly in need of some energy and hope – that three thoughtful kids sitting on a log in the woods gave me without knowing. Sometimes stories, and the needs of their heroes, intersect.
Regardless of where you find yourself right now, it’s probably helpful to think about your life as a story comprised of seasons and chapters. Maybe you’re in a chapter where you’re struggling to set a goal or perhaps one where you’re preparing to face a challenge. You may be in the middle of a challenge (or a battle) or trying to rest and recover from one. Don’t wait for hindsight. Discern the season or chapter you’re in right now, then determine what you most need to live this chapter well and have a story worth telling.