Dear Pogue,

I wrote to you about persistence in our last letter and here I am again on a Monday morning a living example of what I wrote. Monday after Monday I’m here with little gems of…wisdom(?).

So we’re going to practice and master persistence, right? It will make us giants amongst our peers. But there is a small consideration I left out in the last letter. I thought it lent itself so nicely to a Musing.

After all I wrote I’m now going to tell you there is an occasion when we should not persist because that season of our life has come to a conclusion. Yes, our life has seasons as much as the summer roles into the autumn and even though summer may cling on it will eventually pass. All things have a time. What is it the Bible says?

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

    a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,

And we know, despite occasionally denying it, when something is coming to an end. The sages have told us from way back. And if our lives are going to be rich and profit us, we should let go when the time is right, when the season has passed.

How do we know?

Normally the energy has just gone out of the thing, the relationship, the experience. For want of a better description it has become empty. We are doing it out of habit, by rote. There is no emotion left in it. Like the summer leaves, life eventually goes and they wither so whilst there are still leaves all we have has gone brown and crisp. We climb one more mountain and seeing another one beyond we know we’ve climbed enough on this path. And if we’ve done it well, engaged with the journey, savoured the moments we have a rich collection of learning to carry with us and memories to indulge in when we feel wistful.

What then?

Maybe this season has persisted for many years. So we take time to gather ourselves and take stock of where and who we now are. Of what has gone before. Then we move on. Yes we continue, not to the next summit we have seen but off this route to something new. There is a time and maybe now is a new time, a new season, possibly part of the rich tapestry which can record a life. Maybe we’ve walked through a season or gone at it at a sprint for years but time has come to bring it to an end and start over, something new.

So, search yourself and acknowledge the time when things come to a conclusion, for your own profit, as something new awaits. Preserve your memories but approach the new season with light in your eyes and expectation in your heart.

Add this to the letter on Perseverance and keep together.

It’s a new week,

Wic