You’re well on the march to winter now. The solstice came and went back in June and your days became imperceptibly shorter. Lammas came and went quietly with the early harvest. Now the equinox is behind you and there is no denying that summer in all its good green glory has performed its function. Everything good grew, bloomed, and went to seed.
Purpose and achievement realized, made manifest.
A culmination of green and gold, of seed and loam.
We could learn from all the trees and flowers this time of year, of all the seed sowers and bulb growers. Our days are marked by endless pings and alerts, of calendar reminders and notifications. You are approaching the fourth quarter of the business year—that most hatefully efficient quadrisecting delineation of your time—and, if you are a white collar worker who spends more time behind a keyboard than a shovel, you are likely facing some sort of “Q4 performance review.”
If so, God help you.
Your good green heart was meant for more than this.
You will be asked—either by your job or by our wounded culture at large—how you plan to grow in the coming quarter, in the time before the turn of another year.
This is neither fair nor is it natural.
When we lost touch with our agrarian roots, when we left the fields and forests for the factories and offices, we sacrificed a certain attunement with the seasons and cycles. We forgot how this time of year was instructing us in favor of steady work, a long endless metallic drone instead of a cyclical organic rhythm.
We forgot to recognize our victories. We forgot to realize when we had won and when to rest.
The good news is that creation, the loam, the good green pattern churning beneath all know better. The forest knows better. Ask any gardener or beekeeper or orchardist and they will tell you now is the season to take stock. You pull the last of the garden from the dirt, you collect the honey you’ve been waiting on since May, you take your apples to the cider press. There are few thoughts now about producing more, about endless striving. Now all thoughts turn to a heavy sigh of relief and culmination—the fruit is in the basket, the crop is in the barn, the bees are heavy with stores and the wood pile is teetering dangerously high.
It is no small thing to come to the end of a cycle and realize you have made, grown, created enough. That you worked, yes, and labored, but now you can gather. We were not meant to produce endlessly, to grow constantly, to urge and urge and urge.
This is the rhythm our ancestors trusted. This is the rhythm that kept them sane. The ability to stop and say: it is finished.
You should allow yourself the same.
Perhaps you are not a farmer. Perhaps you have no harvest in a literal sense. Still, you have planted and tended something this year. Maybe you raised children through another summer of scraped knees and wild berries. Maybe you launched a project that is finally reaching its natural close. Maybe you simply endured and held on when things were difficult in your heart. That too is a kind of harvest and worth acknowledging.
Instead of asking “what next?” ask “what now?”
What is here? What is complete? What is good?
The trees do not grow new leaves in September. They are not so foolish as to try. They know it is time to let go, to blaze out in one final show of color, to cast seed into the ground and trust the future to take care of itself.
They celebrate by ceasing.
They culminate by closing the cycle.
Do not let the tyranny of quarterly goals, year-end reviews, and other modern inventions of productivity rob you of the deep peace that is due to you in this season. Do not let our culture of relentless progress steal away the chance to enjoy what you have already accomplished.
Some will tell you that rest or idleness now is a sort of failure. The truth is that rest is the crown of the work.
The meadow in September is not anxious. The field after harvest is not ashamed. They have given what they can give. That is enough.
Now is the time to gather your own community, however small, to mark this time following the equinox. Invite friends for a meal. Bake bread, press cider, roast whatever your hands have brought in from the summer. If you have no literal harvest of your own, take stock of what you have done, all the good you have wrought and celebrate it. Buy a pumpkin, light a candle, let the children run until they fall into sleep. You are allowed to live as if the world is not only spreadsheets and headlines you know.
Celebration is a kind of rebellion. Through it, you proclaim: I will not let the anxious cultural ills dictate my pace, I will not let the endless noise drown out the truth of the season. The truth is that you have accomplished something. The truth is that you have made it this far. The truth is that you can rest in that knowledge.
First you need to take your victory lap, though.
The frost is here. The days will shorten further. The long rest of winter will arrive in its time. Not today though. Not yet. Today is for culmination and for you to take some kind of stock of your good verdant victory.
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