It's autumn! It's autumn!

There's a chill in the air here in Sydney ... and I couldn't be happier about it.

Autumn is my favourite time of the year. Always has been.

And given that this year hasn't started well, I'm looking at this entry to my favourite season as a turning point. Things surely must look up from here.

There's something about the softer light that makes me so pleased.

***

On the Easter weekend we took a drive down to Stanwell Park, which is a nice little coastal town just south of Sydney.

We set off for a bushwalk - in the drizzle - and it wasn't long before I turned back, because slipping, sorry I mean walking, in the mud up a hill in the rain is not my idea of a good time.
So I waited in the rain down by the cars while Shaun stoically (stupidly?) "bushwalked". The view from there is quite lovely. It looks a bit like this:



Anyhow - indulge me as I share a second or two of what some might call new-age flakiness - staring out at that view something occurred to me.

You see all the white waves of the breakers? It struck me that those white breakers are like the daily dramas and anxieties of our lives. They're what we take notice of; those breakers command all the attention. The represent "the beach" when the beach is really so much more that than that. Oh yes, those breakers are captivating and dangerous.

Beyond them, from up on the cliff, I could see the swells - softer than the breakers, but swells all the same. They keep crashing in, turning into breakers. A lifetime's worth of worries, all of them out there, ever-present. Just keeping on coming.

And yet if you study the swells you can see that each is surmountable. Each one will turn into a breaker, each will dissipate on the sand.

Then - and here's where I hit upon my revelatory moment - I looked even further out to sea, to the horizon. The swells, they disappear until the water becomes smooth and calm.

Calm.

There's so much of it. Stretching out past the horizon - much, much further than it is possible to comprehend.

So I figure that the old cliche "life's a beach" may not be so far off the mark. Those waves, the niggling daily worries that seem big, they're like a mere grain of sand when they're compared to the vastness of the calm and peace that's within each of us.

I do believe it's infinite and beautiful and soothing.

And that is all I have to say on this matter.