The wind is alive, the air is crisp, and the tress are spectacularly, figuratively ablaze. It’s fall, and, as my mother says, nature is showing off. As much as time feels arbitrary nowadays, the unavoidable warm tones around us serve as a reminder that time still passes and that there are cycles outside of our own, even as we are bogged down by the banalities and anxieties of our day-to-days.
In chapter 84 of the Qur’an, The Sundering, it is written, “So I swear by the twilight glow, and [by] the night and what it envelops, and [by] the moon when it becomes full, [that] you will surely experience state after state” (84: 16-19). Some scholars believe this refers to the balance of all things: ease after hardship, hardship after ease, school life, work life, family life. Different phases, different stages of life.
Mentions of impermanence are both a warning and a comfort. They warn us that the good we may be experiencing in the present will change and reassure us that so too will pain (this too shall pass and all that).
Despair and its opposite, hope, are both inextricably linked to change. Hope that things could change for the better, despair that they’ll only get worse. Or, alternatively despair at stagnancy versus hope that things don’t change because we’re happy with them in the present. These latter states, based in a lack of change, are unlikely to actually pan out. Whether or not we like lit, changes happen, whether they are around us or inside us.
Fiery fall leaves are multifaceted. They are a marvel to behold, and they are also literally leaves dying in a blaze of glory like a phoenix before a dormant winter, when things feel their stillest. We don’t know what the next change will ever bring, but it will bring something. All we can do in the present moment is do our best to make it something good, hope that it is something good, and enjoy the leaves right now.
Iman Jafri
Associate Chaplain for Muslim and Interfaith Life