Learn from others while allowing your own journey to unfold naturally

Depending on where you live, you may have been introduced to the four seasons as four neat little quadrants on a poster board showing winter, spring, summer, and autumn. That kind of four-quadrant graphic is a clear and widely accepted way of teaching the seasons.

However, as we grow older and experience the seasons firsthand, we realize that they are far more complex than what the graphic represents.

We start to learn that not all trees have leaves that turn red and gold in autumn, and not all winters are filled with snow.

We learn that there are places in the world that don't even have seasonal changes like what's on the poster board.

And we learn that this diversity is okay. We embrace it as part of the experience of being on Earth.

Perhaps the same is true for the stages and ages of our lives. Maybe we were taught to think of them in a particular way, but as we get older and experience them, we realize that our perspective needs to change. This is especially true if we move from one place with particular seasonal rhythms to another. The shift can be jarring, and we may long for the changing colors of a picturesque landscape, but we recognize that seasons are different in different spaces.

Let this be true of your own life. Whatever you are feeling in the season you are in, allow it to be what it is. Take the time you need to process, rest, and move through it. There is room for all kinds of seasons, just as there is for the larger seasonal changes. The same is true for the stages and ages of our lives. Let your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and so on be what they need to be, regardless of how they compare to anyone else