The Paradox of Seasonal Longing

Spring arrives exactly when I’m ready to extend winter’s contemplative hibernation. Summer peaks just as I crave autumn’s melancholy. Monsoons end precisely when I’ve learned to appreciate rain’s rhythm. Winter departs when I’ve finally made peace with cold.

This isn’t coincidence—it’s the fundamental human condition of being perpetually out of sync with time itself.

The Timing Problem

We’re grateful for seasons but chronically dissatisfied with their timing, their duration, and our own capacity to fully receive what they offer before they transform into something else. “Aro kichu din thakte parto,” I think as October’s perfect weather dissolves into November’s uncertainty. It could have lasted a few more days.

But seasonal transitions follow planetary mechanics, not personal readiness. Earth’s axial tilt doesn’t negotiate with human preference. The monsoons don’t pause because we’ve finally bought the right rain boots or learned to love petrichor. Winter solstice arrives on schedule whether we’re emotionally prepared or still processing autumn’s lessons.

This creates a peculiar emotional state—a gratitude tinged with frustration, an appreciation shadowed by loss. We love the seasons precisely because they change, yet we resent them for changing before we’re ready.

The Adaptation Paradox

The deeper frustration lies in this: by the time we adapt to seasonal rhythms, they change. Just when I learn winter’s lessons about stillness and introspection, spring demands different skills—growth, energy, renewal. When I master summer’s expansive momentum, autumn calls for contraction and reflection.

Each season requires recalibration. We develop strategies, purchase appropriate clothing, adjust our routines, make peace with the temperature. Then, just as we’ve optimized our lives for these conditions, everything shifts. The wool sweaters go into storage. The summer dresses retreat to the back of the closet. Our hard-won adaptation becomes obsolete.

It’s like learning a language only to move to a different country every three months. The vocabulary of winter—cozy blankets, hot tea, early darkness—becomes useless in summer’s extended daylight and humid nights. We’re perpetual beginners, never quite achieving mastery before the curriculum changes.

The Control We Crave

Maybe seasonal dissatisfaction reflects our human need to control time, to pause perfect moments indefinitely while rushing through difficult ones. We want spring to linger but winter to accelerate, summer to extend but monsoons to moderate. We want editing privileges on reality’s timeline.

This desire reveals something about how we relate to experience itself. We treat seasons like a playlist we should be able to rearrange—skipping the difficult tracks, putting our favorites on repeat. But time doesn’t offer us skip or pause buttons. It only plays forward, at exactly one second per second, indifferent to our preferences.

The irony is that our dissatisfaction often intensifies in proportion to a season’s beauty. The more perfect October becomes—that sweet spot of comfortable temperatures, golden light, and clear skies—the more anxious we feel about its inevitable departure. Beauty becomes a source of pre-emptive grief.

What Seasons Teach

But seasons teach the opposite wisdom: nothing lasts, everything transforms, adaptation matters more than preference. They’re a masterclass in impermanence delivered quarterly, each lesson building on the last.

Spring teaches renewal after dormancy. Summer demonstrates abundance and energy. Monsoons reveal necessity in discomfort. Autumn shows beauty in decay. Winter offers rest as productivity. Then the cycle begins again, each turn deepening our understanding if we’re paying attention.

The gratitude for seasons and the frustration with their brevity both point toward the same truth—we’re temporal beings trying to love temporal experiences without accepting their essential temporality. We want to hold water in our hands without getting wet, to experience beauty without experiencing its passage.

The Practice of Acceptance

Perhaps the work isn’t to overcome seasonal dissatisfaction but to recognize it as a teacher. Every time I think “aro kichu din thakte parto,” I’m receiving an invitation to examine my relationship with change, with control, with the present moment.

What if the perfect length for a season is exactly as long as it lasts? Not because it matches our preferences, but because that’s its nature. Cherry blossoms don’t apologize for falling after two weeks. Monsoons don’t extend themselves because we’ve finally invested in good rain gear.

The seasons model a kind of integrity—being fully themselves for their allotted time, then departing completely to make space for what comes next. They don’t cling to the calendar, don’t overstay out of politeness or popularity. Summer doesn’t think, “They’re really enjoying me, maybe I should stick around through October.” It simply gives way.

Living in Seasonal Time

Tonight I’ll practice loving this season exactly as long as it lasts, grateful for its arrival, accepting of its eventual departure. Not because I’ve mastered acceptance or transcended desire, but because resistance doesn’t pause the planetary tilt. My dissatisfaction doesn’t slow Earth’s orbit.

This doesn’t mean abandoning preferences or pretending all weather is equally pleasant. It means holding preferences lightly, noticing when I’m using dissatisfaction to disconnect from present experience. It means catching that moment when appreciation curdles into grasping, when enjoyment becomes anxious hoarding.

The seasons will continue their rotation whether I’m ready or not, whether I’ve learned their lessons or slept through them entirely. Spring will arrive before I’m done with winter. Summer will peak while I’m still adjusting to warmth. Monsoons will end just as I learn to love the rain.

And perhaps that’s exactly right. Perhaps being slightly out of sync with seasonal time teaches us something essential about being human—that we live in the tension between appreciation and impermanence, between adaptation and change, between the life we’re living and the life that’s already becoming something else.

The seasons don’t wait for our readiness. That’s not cruelty—it’s honesty. They show us that readiness isn’t a prerequisite for change, that adaptation happens in real time, that the only moment we can truly inhabit is this one, in this season, which is already becoming the next.