This year we have had a really lovely autumn in Toronto. There have been so many beautiful sunny days during the last few weeks. The temperature has been in that perfect range where it's comfortable to be out walking with a light jacket - cool enough not be feel overheated but warm enough that you don't start feeling chilly and want to get inside where it's warmer.
The leaves have been hanging on the trees. Some autumns it feels like the leaves turn very quickly and within a week a strong breeze has come along and the leaves are all on the ground and the trees are bare.
I'm so grateful to be experiencing this "slow" autumn.
I've been having that feeling of gratitude often during these recent years. I'm an old man and now I often find I'm reminding myself to focus on what's around me, to appreciate the now, since anything I experience could be the last time I'm here to do it.
This to me is one of the gifts of living into old age. Certainly anytime in your life you could be experiencing something for the last time - young people die - but when you're young it's hard to keep that awareness of the ephemeral nature of life in your consciousness and maybe you shouldn't, maybe you should be focusing on living and the world and what you what to do with your life.
But for me, now, in these later years, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about five years from now or even next year. I find such comfort in the now, in the daily, in the simple fact of existence.