đź“Ť London, UK, 6/29/23

Every time the seasons change, I convince myself this new season must be my favorite of them all.

This happens every year, without fail. I think what I’m slowly starting to realize is it’s not the seasons themselves, but the changing of seasons that I love

As soon as the hot summer gives way to cool breezes, or the frosty winters break with the first sign of warm sunlight, it’s like being suddenly jarred awake as if one didn’t even realize they had fallen asleep in the first place.

There’s a Kerouac quote I sometimes come back to: “because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars…”

Change is something humans are engineered to fear, a product of our natural evolution that presupposes constants and familiarity as a known safety. It’s not wrong for it either, but in the modern day, change is not what it once was—it’s not an imminent threat, and it’s certainly not a death sentence.

I think change can be just as addicting as it is terrifying, to keep jarring ourselves awake out of the monotony of everyday living by slipping off into the unknown, changing the only things we know how: our jobs, our partners, our clothes, our location, our identity.

At the very least, seasons are something we don’t have to worry about, and we can let the change slowly happen around us while enjoying the newness first accompanying it, before it fades back into sameness.