Football games, midterms, deer hunting, raking leaves, shortening days, corn mazes, and pumpkin pie—what do all these have in common? They share the same season. They are the things that make fall—fall. Traditions and patterns become part of life and create a balance within it, giving us goals, duties, obligations, and things to look forward to.
Every season has its traditions and each tradition has an appropriate season or time. This maxim can be carried into the details of daily life. Traditions are traditions for a reason; they work. They may not be perfect, but they have been kept in practice because humans have found that they bring order, efficiency and joy into life. It is in a human’s interest to determine and stick to the practices, behaviors, and activities that produce the most good as their life progresses.
In essence, we need to find how to create balance in our lives by incorporating the right kind of behavior at the right time and place. We will then live a life of “seasons,” following patterns in our thoughts and behavior as nature does in its own cycle of seasons.
Just as the leaves turn brilliant colors as they ready for winter in the fall, we will know when to act and how—according to what we have experienced—combined with natural intuition and reason. Our seasons will be balanced and ordered, falling in a natural sequence, when we learn to harmonize our human experience, reason, and intuition in order to create the ideal patterns in our life.
For some, Ben Kessler did not act according to such an outlook. He could be seen as stepping out of season. Rachel Bauder’s article takes a look at his actions as embracing the season he was in, so to speak. Reading this article, one sees that there can be many ways to define the seasons within one’s life. As in nature, we cannot analyze any particular species in a vacuum. To understand it fully, we must view the species as intimately connected to its surrounding environment. Different seasons are appropriate or correspond to certain environments. Some can work outside of their typical environment, others work best in different environments.
We also need to look ahead, as Katie and Patrick point out, forging a promising future for the American youth. Patterns that will result in successful educational traditions for the current and future generations must be created. We can’t step out of season and pick flowers that haven’t bloomed yet—we can’t use praise to encourage students who are failing. We need to find the right match: The right season and time, that is.
Steven Daly’s article on Title IX reflects the need for foresight within in laws. We can’t assign seasons. As in nature, seasons are natural and correspond to the climate, time, and global positioning. Winter in Minnesota is a bit different than it is in California, yet we don’t tell Californians they can’t swim outside because Minnesotans don’t have the same opportunity to do so. Everything has its own season. There is no reason male athletes should be held back when the season is right for them, just because the season for female athletes isn’t quite in full bloom.
I hope you enjoy this first issue of the season. We want to hear what you think, so please send in your feedback!
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