Fall has always been my favorite season.

Perhaps because I didn’t grow up with it.

I grew up in the Philippines, where the seasons don’t change quite the way they do here. We don’t have that familiar autumn when the green slowly gives way to gold, orange, and red. The trees don’t put on one last beautiful show before the colder months arrive.

For much of my life, fall was something I knew mostly from pictures, movies, and stories.

And then I moved somewhere where I could finally see it.

The first time I watched the leaves change, I remember being fascinated by how something as simple as a leaf could make change look so beautiful.

There is something about fall that has always felt different to me.

The trees don’t fight the changing season.

The leaves change color, fall to the ground, and the branches become bare. And somehow, there is no tragedy in it.

We simply look at it and call it beautiful.

I’ve wondered about that.

Why is it that we can look at a tree changing and see beauty in it, but when life changes, we often see only what we are losing?

We want people to remain who they were when we first knew them.

We want relationships to stay familiar.

We want our lives to unfold according to the version we imagined.

But life keeps moving.

People change.

We change.

Relationships change.

And perhaps the difficult part isn’t that things change.

Perhaps it is that we keep expecting them not to.

Fall reminds me that there is beauty in allowing things to become what they are meant to become, even when they look different from what we imagined.

The leaf doesn’t stop being beautiful because it is no longer green.

The tree doesn’t become less of a tree because it has lost its leaves.

It is simply entering another season.

Maybe we are like that too.

There are seasons when life feels full and alive, and there are others when things become quieter and unfamiliar.

Sometimes a relationship changes.

Sometimes a dream takes a different shape.

Sometimes we realize that the person we are becoming no longer fits comfortably inside the life we once knew.

And perhaps that doesn’t always mean something has gone wrong.

Maybe it simply means we are growing.

I think that is one of the things I love most about fall.

It doesn’t apologize for changing.

It doesn’t try to convince us that summer was better.

It simply becomes what it is next.

And maybe there is something we can learn from that.

We don’t have to remain who we were simply because someone loved that version of us.

We don’t have to keep a relationship exactly as it was simply because it once brought us happiness.

We don’t have to be afraid of becoming someone we haven’t met yet.

Sometimes growth is simply having the courage to recognize that a new season has arrived.

I think about the Philippines sometimes when I see all of this.

I grew up without autumn, without ever seeing trees change into those beautiful colors that made me fall in love with the season later in life.

But maybe I didn’t really miss the lesson.

Life taught me its own version of fall.

It taught me that people can leave.

That circumstances can change.

That things we thought would last forever sometimes don’t.

That we can wake up one day and realize that we are no longer the person we used to be.

And perhaps, like the trees, we can learn that this doesn’t necessarily mean something has gone wrong.

Maybe it simply means we are living.

We are growing.

We are moving through another season.

I still wish I could have grown up seeing autumn.

I wish I had childhood memories of walking through piles of leaves, watching the trees change outside my window, feeling that first coolness in the air.

But maybe there is something fitting about discovering my favorite season later in life.

Maybe I needed to become old enough to understand what the leaves were saying.

That beauty can exist in change.

That being bare doesn’t mean being broken.

And that a season ending doesn’t mean the story is ending with it.

The trees will stand through the winter.

And when the time comes, new leaves will return.

Perhaps we need that reminder too.

There will be moments when life looks unfamiliar, when something we knew so well no longer looks the same, and when we wonder what comes next.

Maybe the answer is more than we think.

The tree is still there.

The roots are still there.

Life is still there.

Waiting quietly for another season.

And maybe so are we.

So I think I understand now why fall became my favorite season.

It isn’t only because of the colors.

It isn’t only because of the crisp air or the beauty of the trees.

Perhaps I love it because fall tells me something I need to remember:

It is okay to change.

It is okay to outgrow.

It is okay when life doesn’t look the way it once did.

Some endings are simply nature’s way of making room for another beginning.

I grew up in a country without the season I love most.

And maybe that is why, whenever I see the leaves begin to change, I don’t just see autumn.

I see a quiet reminder that life was never meant to stay the same.

Some things will fall away.

Some things will remain.

And some things will return when their time comes.

Perhaps we aren’t meant to understand every season while we’re living through it.

Perhaps we’re simply meant to trust that there is beauty in becoming.

Maybe that is why I love fall.

Until next time,