There is a kind of wisdom that only the seasons know. No amount of technology, willpower, or cleverness can persuade an apple tree to blossom in January, nor coax the autumn leaves to turn before their time. This quiet truth can be infuriating to those of us who have grown accustomed to instant replies, same-day delivery, and the sense that all the world might be bent to our timetables. Yet nature, that most patient of teachers, insists that life’s deepest work takes the time it takes.
The trouble is that we live in an age allergic to waiting. Even the word “delay” has become something of a profanity in our collective vocabulary. But the patience of the seasons calls us to a different posture,one in which time is not a problem to be solved, but a companion to be trusted. The farmer knows that planting a seed and demanding fruit tomorrow is not merely unrealistic, it is absurd. And still, many of us attempt this very thing in our relationships, our work, and our inner growth.
Patience is not mere passivity, however. It is not idly twiddling our thumbs while the universe gets on with it. Rather, it is a form of active participation,a decision to align ourselves with the pace at which meaningful transformation actually unfolds. The seasons do not rush, yet they never fail to arrive. The snow melts, the buds swell, the wheat ripens, and the leaves fall, all without the panic that so often animates our modern days.
There is an elegance in this slow choreography, and it invites us to reconsider how we mark the passage of our own lives. The corporate quarter, the academic term, the election cycle,these are our invented rhythms. They serve their purposes, but they are not ultimate. The oak, the tide, the glacier,they keep time differently, and perhaps more truthfully.
When we adopt the patience of the seasons, we grant ourselves the grace to mature without hurry. We allow friendships to deepen in their own good time, projects to take shape without forcing, grief to soften at its own pace. In doing so, we also learn to trust that there is a wisdom at work beyond our managing.
This trust is not naïve optimism. It is an act of humility, a recognition that while we can plant and water, we cannot command the rain nor dictate the sun. The patience of the seasons teaches us that life, at its richest, will not be bullied. We are invited instead to walk alongside it, matching our steps to its unhurried stride.
And so perhaps our task is not to make things happen faster, but to be present to the goodness that is happening already, often imperceptibly. A seed in the soil does not appear to be doing much. Yet, unseen, the roots are stretching, the shoot is forming, the life is gathering itself for its appointed hour. So too with us.
The seasons do not fret about the time they take. Neither should we. For in the long patience of life, what is meant to be born will find its moment, and what is meant to end will bow out in peace. Our part is to keep company with the slow miracle, attentive and grateful.
So I invite you my friends, choose one area of your life where you have been impatient for results. For the next month, commit to practising “seasonal patience” with it,tending to it faithfully, but without rushing the outcome. Keep a journal of what you notice in yourself as you slow your expectations to the pace of natural growth.
