Finding Beauty In The Season Of Decay

Photo by Astro Wizard

At a time when as a culture we find it hard to agree on anything about beauty — what it is, if it matters, if it even objectively exists — I find it curious that no matter who you ask, they find the season of death and decay to be beautiful. Why is it that the transition to winter, where everything green and growing is slowly dying, is profoundly stunning? Nature surely does not have to be this way, but it is. And we all know it.

When I was living in Southern California, I deeply missed this seasonal shift. Yes, some trees still turned color and their leaves fell, but it wasn’t the sweeping feeling of change that marks autumn in the midwest, where I grew up and now once more reside. In Minnesota, the entire landscape turns yellow, red, and orange, starting like a fire that catches in September and overtakes everything by November. Even the sky in autumn has a special hue, a lovely periwinkle blue.

Recently I was remembering reading a picture book with my mom when I was little, a book called The Young Fir Tree. It’s a tragic tale of a little fir tree growing up in a forest who longs more than anything to become a Christmas tree in a family’s home. After its wish is granted and it spends the Christmas season at the center of a family’s celebrations, it’s put into the shed until spring and then burned in a fire.

I remember reading this book, which is oddly depressing for a children’s story, and crying my little heart out for that fir tree. What I also remember, though, is that there was something strangely satisfying about mourning his short, fictional life.

I find that there’s a similar phenomenon with sad music, sad books, and sad movies. Personally, I’m generally not too interested in any form of art that doesn’t at some point make me feel something very deeply, and oftentimes those emotions will be sorrow, grief, pain, or loss. So why are we drawn to this? Is it simply for the catharsis? Is it some sick morbidity we all share?

Or could it be because life simply often is tragic? And that it’s often through tragedy or pain that we are forced to search for, and hopefully find, meaning? And that if we ignore, or paper over suffering, we are also ignoring truth and our one chance at experiencing beauty?

With these things on my mind, I asked my husband if he would still be so emotionally invested in his favorite football team if they always won. At first, he said yes, until I explained that there would never be any doubt that they would win, it would always be by a landslide. To this he said, of course not, there has to be some sense of struggle.

I see a similarity in this and the fact that although our access to entertainment, luxury, and leisure has never been so high, our depression rates are soaring as well. We are free to stay home and order food, binge our favorite shows, “quiet quit” at our jobs, and turn to porn or an AI girlfriend (who may be attractive, may be addictive, but surely will never be beautiful) rather than pursue a real relationship and raise children. None of this ease, however, is making us happy.

Meanwhile, I spent hours yesterday in the heights of frustration with my 16-month-old toddler refusing to go down for his nap. I had planned to take a shower and eat while he napped, and I would have settled for even 15 minutes away from him to do those things. Instead, after I tried his usual cozy routine, complete with white noise, nursing, rocking, and black-out-curtains, twice, he still would not go down. On top of this, he had a cold, so I knew he especially needed sleep.

At my wit’s end, I cried, I despaired, I searched my soul for a way to not explode, or implode. It was not fun, it was not easy, and I certainly wasn’t happy. Between my inability to get him down for his nap and my inability to control my own emotional response, I felt like I was a bad mom.

After the peak of my own tears, I noticed that I had a missed call and voicemail on my phone from my father-in-law. At first, I worried that there might be news worse than my toddler’s insistence on staying awake for more than 12 hours. Instead, he was simply calling me to thank me for what he said was a great job I was doing with our son, that even though it can be a little tough at times, I was doing an incredible job, and that our son was blessed to have us as his parents.

This was exactly what I needed to hear, and it instantly changed the entire way every nook and limb of my body felt. All I really needed to be able to carry on was to know that someone else saw the small daily sacrifices I was making, and that to someone else, those sacrifices were truly beautiful. His timing couldn’t have been better.

And so, I pulled myself together, managed to somehow take care of my own needs, and set out for the park with my toddler. As we walked through our neighborhood, we saw the changing leaves — yellow, orange, and red. Later he gave me kisses on my cheek and we read books together, with me repeating over and over, “That’s a leaf. That’s a cloud. That’s a tree.”

I remembered that although I’m not always happy, I am deeply joyful. There is purpose to my sacrifice.

This year I have been reading the Bible from cover to cover for the first time in my life. I’ve reached the gospels right as autumn has been starting, and I’ve realized that the red leaves and the red blood of Jesus on the cross share more than their color. They both are telling us that it is through sacrifice, through letting go of our own sense of control over time, over death, over suffering, that we find beauty. That beauty is found in embracing life, tragedy, imperfection and all.

The fall leaves, in their undisputed beauty, are whispering to us that it’s the striving, the aiming, the trying that brings us joy, even when we might not always hit the mark or win the game. It’s the very fact that there is something worth losing, something that could or in fact will someday be lost, that keeps us moving forward. Without that, there really isn’t any beauty at all.