Have You Heard Of Clash of Seasons?
Life is lived in seasons. We are born into a season and we die in another season. The beauty is about living these seasons in the most beautiful way. The beauty is about identifying which season we…
Life is lived in seasons. We are born into a season and we die in another season. The beauty is about living these seasons in the most beautiful way.
The beauty is about identifying which season we are in and respecting the same. The beauty also lies in understanding which season other is and working out the same.
A husband and wife, married for nineteen years, could live in different seasons. The beauty is to know and respect that.
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She said: he is absent. He is here and he is not here. Nineteen years and I am still waiting for him to arrive.
He said: she is suffocating me. Every conversation is a demand. I cannot breathe in my own house.
Both were describing the other's character. Both were wrong about it. Neither of them was defective. They were standing in different seasons of life and had no word for it.
Seasons of Life
The older Indian systems held something we have thrown away: that a life has stages, and that each stage runs on a different logic.
- Learning Season. Where student receives skill, knowledge, energy, reputation, options
- Earning Season. Where the person accumulates , earns, provides, sustains
- Fulfilment Season. Where you fulfil all your desires.
- Withdrawal Season. Where you withdraw from life and probably, relax.
This is picked up from Ashrams but just wanted to rename it as seasons for acceptability and better understanding for all of us. The wisdom of one season is failure in another. Nothing about the behaviour changes. The season changes, and the same act flips from right to wrong.
Modern life did not just forget the seasons. It put a single infinite line in their place.
Grow. Earn more. Stay relevant. Stay young. Never step back. There is no permission to stop acquiring, and no ceremony for handing over.
When we tell a 68 year old man and ask him to "keep going", it sounds like a great thing. So he loves to stay in this season. Because there is nothing to move to, and there is no dignified way to let go of this one.
So almost all clashes are clash of seasons. Two people, different seasons. Everything works according to positions and not feelings. See my earlier notes on this.
Do not ask "which season am I in." Most people are in two or three at once.
Ask Not: what is wrong with him, or with her, or with me.
Which season is each person in this house actually standing in — and is anyone being judged by the rules of a season they left, or have not yet reached?
Answer that for four people and you will find that a good number of your household's fights were never about character at all.