Seasons of love

Isn’t that a song? “Seasons of Love” from the award-winning, groundbreaking Broadway musical Rent: “525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear… How do you measure a year in the life? How about love?”

YouTube it – it’s great, right? I even played it for my girls because I think it carries with it such an infinite message.

This morning, as I looked out my window onto the changing leaves, I started giggling with my hubby talking about how life and relationships are like the seasons.

In the beginning we’re baby buds, tiny and new, perhaps the snow – or the ice, even – has begun to melt of our hearts from a previous hurt; it’s spring again with all the hope for a bright tomorrow.

Soon, with a ray of sunshine and drops of rain we begin to come into bloom with a lovely display of color and softness. We are breathtaking inside and out.

We ring in the summer, where we are in euphoric amazement of our emotions, and our points of view change to positive outlooks and widening horizons. The glass is definitely half-full today because our lives are richer.

We become a little more tolerant of those obnoxious people, a little nicer to the stranger on the street, a little more willing to put in the extra effort at work. We’re happy to just be alive and there’s a flagrant hip-hop in our steps.

We start to soar until here we are dancing on clouds, and then, with the turn of our heads, without even knowing, there’s a change in our perfect universe and the air somehow seems colder, so much that we catch a chill; we may experience fights, misunderstandings, sadness, discouragement, restlessness and frustration.

Oh yes, the weather is getting pretty nippy now as our autumn is approaching and our leaves are heavy with dampness.

But we begin to realize, even though things aren’t perfect, it’s our imperfection. Together we realize even more the beauty in the season and we’re growing. We have so many more colors now!

We’re not constantly on the clouds, but every now and then our shoes get a little lighter and we float above the ground. We give our whole selves to our children, our pets, our family, our friends. We don’t care if we’re walking on clouds anymore; we just try to make sure with every ounce of our strength they are.

And then I imagine as if a veil is coming down, it snows, and we are enveloped in a sense of peace, all the beauty of our life, all the wisdom, all the joy, all the pain. It all comes back and our bones are weaker, our skin is more fragile, the lines grow deeper, but won’t we look back and say, “Wow, I did that?”

What an amazing whirlwind of a life… and then again, without even knowing, without even a question, we’re smiling.

How do you measure your life as the seasons change? I hope with every new day you make it worth remembering.

Let me leave you with a verse from Ecclesiastes 3: 1-15, “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.”

And speaking of seasons: Fashion Passion for fall is next week! Now get out there and make your year worth measuring! And know the most important thing is to measure in love…

Ciao Bella

Posted by Janel M. Harrison on September 27, 2012. Filed under Columns,Girl-2-Girl,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry