Michael Commane
We are in season-change mode. The first chestnuts are on the ground. On Sunday I saw a mother out with her children collecting ‘conkers’. The creeper on the wall in my garden is slowly but surely changing from green to the early stages of golden brown. The first scarves and gloves are appearing.
It’s dark at 6.50am. You need a light on your bicycle after 7.00pm. And nothing is going to stop the process, even if we had an Indian summer last week.
Teachers know the exact number of days to mid-term. I counted them too when I was in the classroom. Halloween has been mentioned and the word Christmas too has appeared.
It’s part of our make up to look backwards and forwards. It would be terrible if we couldn't look back on our lives just as it would take so much from our lives if we did not have hopes and plans for the future.
But there is something about living in the now that’s a trick of life that so many of us fail to appreciate.
I remember when I was teaching and looking forward to the holidays someone saying to me that it was a dangerous thing to wish away our lives. A wise man once said to me the things that we worry and fret about seldom if ever happen.
In these days of process, watching the colours change on the trees, feeling the fall in temperature and the days growing shorter one could easily lament the coming of winter and regret having not done all the things we should have during the summer months.
You can do nothing about spilt milk and we have no idea what’s around the corner. So that has to mean that we should do our damnedest to relax in the now. All we ever have is the now.
Dare I say it? I have crashed many a traffic light. In recent weeks, partly due to the clampdown on illegal cycling and cyclists misbehaving on the roads I am stopping at every red traffic light.
Just last week, while stopped at a light, it dawned on me all the things that were right in front of my eyes. A woman was talking to her small child, both laughing. On the other side of the road, Mr Trendy was coming out of a shop with freshly-brewed coffee.
A few metres away, a man talking loudly to someone. I often see him there. He is something of a character and has a word for everyone passing by.
For 30 or so seconds I was watching the world go by.
Had I not stopped at that red light I would have missed all that.
Yes, it’s getting darker earlier, but there is something new about it. It's a different experience to relish.
Only a few weeks back I was saying to someone I hate the advent of winter. Thinking about it these last days it has dawned on me how silly a thing it was to say.
Of course the business world wants us now to begin focusing on winter breaks and thinking of Christmas.
It is one of the terrible drawbacks of ‘market forces’ and the world of capitalism.
It’s far nicer, far better and certainly good for our health to live in the now, breathing in and out the free air that’s there for us to use.
It’s not a case of being smug. It’s good to appreciate the world about us, basking in all that we ever have, the now, the present. Making the best of the moment. Carpe diem.
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