The Seasoned Life

This book draws parallels of our human lifespan, to that of the weather seasons of: spring, summer, autumn and winter. The author assumes the useful years of our being to be eighty. He divides these years, equally, into the four seasons, being twenty years each. Spring season is viewed to be promissory, belonging to the parents or the system that nurtures the young into the confident and independent person of the latter years. Come summer, we become adults, as we reach the peak of our physical growth and energy. Autumn, in the life of plants, is the fall of leaves. Likewise, humanly, red flags start showing up at this time, signalling the reality of our mortality. From the summer years, until somewhere in the winter years, we are wired to be productive. But it is the winter season that calls for us to be collected and to pass on what we have gathered, over the mileage of our life, to those in waiting. The author notes that, while we all can survive spring, summer and autumn, we surely go to sleep in winter. We never start the cycle all over, again. At best, the winter can be long. In other words, we can live, anything past eighty. However, he argues that past eighty, we live a preventative life pattern. The message of the book is that all seasons are beautiful and it is in our interest to take advantage of each season while it lasts.