Life is Lived in Seasons
A Rule I Live By
My stomach did a somersault when I hit “cmd + q”, exiting the Zoom meeting. I stared blankly, processing what just happened. I did it. I gave my resignation notice.
In the space of a conversation, life catapulted into a new beginning.
I live by the rule: “life is lived in seasons.” A season is a life stage. It could be a few weeks long, or it could stretch on for years.
Within these discrete chunks of living, imagination and commitment weave together, creating a beautiful patch in the quilt of life.
Free to Imagine
This rule gives me permission to reinvent myself, over and over again. When I stepped away from my job, I wasn’t stepping away from working at a company forever. I wasn’t even stepping away from the same company forever. I simply decided that there was a different way to live for now.
A season of working, learning, and renting an apartment in Austin transformed into a nomadic season of self-discovery, leveling up, and wandering in Asia. The next season seems pointed towards settling in the northeast US, finding community, and doing ambitious work. (But who knows how it will unfold.)
The possibilities are always open.
Invited to Commit
Simultaneously, this rule has its restrictions.
A season is dedicated to a particular way of being. As much as I’d like to live every type of life imaginable, my time on this earth is finite.
With this rule, I’m not allowed to live a hundred contradictory ways at once. (It would be very hard to be a settled-down nomadic traveler.) A dedicated season is an invitation to dig in, get deep and be present.
With the push to commit and the boundless space to imagine, I aim to live in the gales of seasonality, embracing the storms and sunshine along the way.
This piece was written as the result of a prompt from the Write of Passage bootcamp. I’m grateful to be participating in my second cohort!
Snap of the Week
Well penned, Saalik.
It's like doing residencies and fellowships. You're doing/did a nomadic residency haha, fun oxymoron there.
Btw, your last name, one of steal, or is it iron? I'm assuming you're Indian, and if you are, where in India are you from? I'm from Gujarat.
Beautifully articulated, Saalik. I like the juxtaposition of the two rules, acting as a pressure valve on each other.
I'm going to share this particular phrase with others:
"There is a different way to live, for now". The power of that addendum clause.