Seasons: The Four Seasons

I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all (Ecclesiastes 9:11)

While we in Kenya don’t experience the four seasons – winter, spring, summer, and autumn – it is possible to use the nature of these seasons to explain what happens in our lives regarding change and transitions. The four are distinct in their characteristics and, by extension, their experiences. Knowing what’s happening around you helps you understand what season you are in.

Winter: The preparation

The first thing that comes to mind when anyone thinks about winter is how cold it can get. The extent of the cold varies with location and time, but it’s cold nonetheless. This season is usually characterized by solitude and keeping to oneself, as people prefer to stay indoors to stay warm. Like the Covid pandemic period when people worked from home and avoided meeting up as regularly as they did, the winter season may have people keeping to themselves.

I believe this is the season of preparation because of the ability to find time away to think, grow and get refreshed. Some people may not like this season because it may feel like rejection. This inclination to remain social is due to personality factors or even FOMO (fear of missing out). While it may not be a popular season to be in, it can allow you to prepare yourself mentally, physically, and spiritually for future seasons as you build your arsenal to take on future battles. Unfortunately, when ‘Netflix and chill’ is all you do in winter, it may show when seasons change, and you find that nothing prepared you for the coming seasons.

Spring: The action

The following season is spring which (from cartoons I watched as a kid) usually involves blooming flowers, melting snow, and chirping birds. Animals most commonly have their young during this season because of how conducive the warm weather is for raising fragile infants. This season is one of the most beautiful (in my opinion) because of how alive and vibrant everything around seems to be. This season is for action because whatever was being prepared in winter is now being ‘unleashed’ by taking advantage of the conducive environment for growth and productivity.

In spring, the skills, talents, and any abilities which were being cultivated in isolation can now be put to use. The seeds of long work hours, which may have seemed pointless, can directly be applied to show their true potential. Diligence in the season of preparation will be evident during the season of action because you have the seeds to plant. However, those who didn’t build capacity in isolation will have nothing to apply because they lack the seeds to sow. Without taking advantage of winter, the most to be expected is that you’ll watch others plant their seeds and wait for the harvest. The worst would be that you will have to wait until the next winter to (hopefully) have the next opportunity to prepare for the following spring.

Summer: The refinement

Again, according to the little I know about summer, I know it as a scorching but fun season since swimming and other outdoor activities are most common. While spring is usually the planting season, summer also has a few crops being grown though what primarily happens is that what was grown in spring blooms and grows in summer. In this season, trees are often full of fruits and leaves, while animals who had their young now focus on teaching strength and survival skills.

In life, the summer season is the time of refinement because it involves monitoring the growth of what was planted in spring during the ‘action’ season. Such monitoring is about improving the chances of eventual success by strengthening what works, changing what doesn’t work, and increasing the overall system’s efficiency. Here, people refine the skills prepared in winter and put them into action in summer to maximize their results and get the most ‘fruit’ by the following season. Again, if nothing is prepared in winter, there’s nothing to act upon in spring and obviously nothing to refine in summer, leading to a wasted season.

Autumn: The harvest

This season is the year’s final quarter before transitioning back into winter. Unlike the warmth of summer, autumn weather involves a temperature drop coupled with strong winds and drying and falling of leaves from trees. By this time, most crops are at their highest level of maturity, and all that’s left to do is harvest. Very few plants can be planted at this time, but it has to be done carefully, especially concerning timing because of how close the chill of winter is around the corner. As people now get to the fields to reap what they sowed, animals are usually also busy storing food for winter when they will be hibernating to keep away from the cold.

Life’s autumn feels like the final lap in the race when you can now quantify the harvest from your efforts right from winter. Autumn may be at the end of your life or even a tiny portion of it, but it marks the point at which you can do little or nothing more except reap what you sowed and the harvest never lies. At this point, you can account for all the work you put in either negatively (to betray laziness) or positively (to commend industriousness). Most importantly, what you harvest in autumn should get you through winter because it is only until spring that you can plant again.

So what do the seasons of your life look like? Are you enjoying the relaxation of winter, forgetting that spring will need you to have seeds for planting? Are you gazing at the beauty of spring, forgetting that summer will require you to have planted what you expect to reap? Are you basking in the summer sun when you should be pruning and monitoring what you will harvest in autumn? And will your harvest in autumn take you through the isolation of winter? Every season has an assigned responsibility we must take up to ensure that we get the best from each of them. Some seasons may be harsh, but they have significance; we must acknowledge and pursue them. The totality of our lives literally depends on our stewardship and attitude toward the different seasons we’re exposed to.