Living with the seasons

Maybe nature knows something we have forgotten.

What if wisdom does not begin with knowing more, but with noticing more?

Why does our energy change throughout the year?

Why does nature bloom, let go, become still, and begin again?

And why do we expect ourselves to stay exactly the same through all of it?

The more I think about these questions, the more fascinating they become.

Maybe that is what I love so much about philosophy.

It gives us permission to wonder.

Not everything needs an immediate answer. Sometimes asking a better question changes the way you look at everything.

Socrates understood this beautifully. Wisdom was not about pretending to know everything, but about recognising how much there is still to discover.

I love that idea.

Because the moment we think we already understand everything, we stop looking.

And for me, wonder begins where certainty softens.

We are surrounded by cycles

Nature never seems embarrassed about changing.

Spring arrives and everything begins to open.

Summer expands outward.

Autumn lets go.

Winter becomes quiet.

Then somehow, life begins again.

Heraclitus, one of the ancient Greek philosophers, saw reality as something that is constantly changing.

A river remains a river, even though the water flowing through it is never the same.

That thought stayed with me.

Maybe we do not have to stay the same to remain ourselves.

We understand this when we look at nature.

A tree loses its leaves and nobody thinks the tree has failed.

We know it is part of the cycle.

So why are we so much harder on ourselves when we need to slow down, change direction or let something go?

Then I started looking at the science

This is where my curiosity really took over.

Because the seasons are not just beautiful scenery around us.

They are the result of physics.

The Earth is tilted on its axis by roughly 23.4 degrees. As it travels around the Sun, that tilt changes the angle and duration of sunlight reaching different parts of the planet.

Such a small tilt on a cosmic scale…

yet it transforms entire landscapes.

Leaves change colour.

Flowers appear.

Temperatures shift.

Days become longer and shorter.

Call it physics. I call it magic too.

Because understanding how something works does not make it less extraordinary to me.

It makes it even more extraordinary.

Your body is reading the seasons too

The part that fascinated me most was discovering how strongly our bodies respond to light.

Our eyes do more than simply allow us to see.

Light also gives our internal biological clock information about day and night.

That clock helps regulate things such as our sleep-wake rhythm, alertness and melatonin.

So when the days become shorter or longer, the environment is literally sending different signals to our bodies.

And suddenly something someone recently said to me made much more sense:

“You wouldn’t wear a summer dress in winter, would you?”

I laughed when I first heard it.

But then I thought about it.

We naturally change our clothes with the seasons.

We change what we eat.

Our surroundings change.

The amount of daylight changes.

Nature changes completely.

Yet we often expect ourselves to have the exact same amount of energy in January as we do in June.

Work harder.

Train harder.

Stay productive.

Keep going.

Maybe the body is not always asking us to push through.

Maybe sometimes it is simply asking us to listen.

That is where it became personal for me

The older I get, the more sensitive I seem to become to these rhythms.

Or maybe I am simply paying more attention now.

I love every season, but I have always felt especially drawn to spring and autumn.

They are the seasons where transformation becomes almost impossible to ignore.

In autumn, you can watch nature release what it no longer needs.

In spring, you see life return to places that looked completely still.

I find something incredibly comforting in that.

Not all stillness means nothing is happening.
Not all letting go means something has been lost.

Sometimes change is simply preparation for what comes next.

And I notice that the more I listen to myself, the easier it becomes to recognise my own seasons too.

When do I need movement?

When do I need rest?

When do I want connection?

When do I need silence?

What food feels good?

When do I need to be outside?

When is my intuition asking me to slow down and actually pay attention?

Even my menstrual cycle sometimes seems to move alongside the rhythm of the moon.

I do not need to turn that observation into an absolute truth.

I simply find it fascinating enough to stay curious about it.

Because not everything has to be fully explained before we are allowed to explore it.

For me, this is also self-love

For a long time, self-love sounded like something we had to actively do.

Improve ourselves.

Heal ourselves.

Become a better version of ourselves.

But I increasingly think self-love can also be much simpler.

Listening.

Noticing.

Respecting the signals your body gives you instead of automatically overriding them.

Asking:

What do I actually need right now?

Not because every feeling needs to dictate our lives.

But because constantly living against ourselves cannot be the answer either.

And I feel incredibly grateful that I have created more freedom in my own life to respond to that.

To move when I have energy.

To slow down when I need to.

To spend time outside.

To investigate what works for me rather than blindly following what life is supposed to look like.

Science and spirituality do not have to cancel each other out

Maybe this is one of the biggest things my curiosity has taught me.

I do not feel like I have to choose between science, philosophy and spirituality.

For me, they can exist beside each other.

Science explores how something happens.
Philosophy asks what it means.
Mythology gives it a story.
Spirituality lets me feel that I am part of it.

Different languages.

Different perspectives.

Maybe different ways of looking at the same wonder.

Because we are not standing outside nature, watching it happen.

Our bodies respond to light.

To darkness.

To temperature.

To movement.

To rest.

To rhythm.

We are nature too.

And maybe living with the seasons is not some new wellness trend at all.

Maybe it is simply remembering something very old.

Maybe we have forgotten how to wonder

When was the last time you lay in the grass without your phone and simply watched the clouds?

When did you last walk into a forest without needing to arrive anywhere?

When did you stop and look at a tree as if you had never seen one before?

Sometimes we become so busy being adults that we forget what children naturally do.

They look.

They ask.

They explore.

They wonder.

And maybe that sense of wonder is not childish at all.

Maybe it is one of the most intelligent ways we can move through life.

The more I learn, the more I realise how much there is still to discover.

About nature.

About the universe.

About our bodies.

And about ourselves.

Maybe we do not need to return to nature.
Maybe we simply need to remember that we never truly left it.

So now I am curious:

In which season do you notice the biggest change in your body, mood or energy?

And do you allow yourself to move with that rhythm…

or do you usually push against it?