Sigh. I’ve gone a terribly long time since my last blog post – again. I don’t know what to say, except that it’s autumn. Autumn is my favorite time of year. I love the cooling temperatures, the shorter days. I love the falling leaves, the crunch under my feet. I love the amber hue the sun takes on as it sits at an oblique angle in the sky. I love the changing pace, how things always seem to slow down and speed up at the same time.

And yet – for some reason, autumn always seems to be the riskiest time of year for me. Every time I’ve gotten close to suicide, it’s been in the autumn. There’s something so true and meaningful for me about autumn, as the world around me starts to most closely resemble the world inside me. And yet there’s also a desperate fear of meaninglessness that blows in the chilly breeze, a familiar wind that asks me whether I can defend my own existence – am I worth the resources I consume? Am I worth the trouble I cause? Do I belong here anymore?

So that’s where I’ve been – not constantly fearing and questioning these things. But sometimes, and with some consistency. More often than not, when I’ve had disposable time, time I could use to blog. I’ve been pondering. Pondering my existence, and my place in the world.

I’ve been pondering this while reading The Fourth Turning is Here by Neil Howe. It’s a follow-up to two books he wrote with the late William Strauss in the 80’s and 90’s, Generations and The Fourth Turning. Strauss and Howe developed a theory that four generational archetypes repeat throughout Anglo-American history, and that history follows a repeating series of four “turnings,” based in great part on where each of the generational archetypes are in their life. For instance, right now, we are in a Fourth Turning (a “Crisis,” and would you deny that?). The living generations now are the Silent generation (an “Artist” archetype) in late elderhood; the Boomer generation (a “Prophet” archetype) entering elderhood; Generation X (a “Nomad” archetype) in midlife; Millennials (a “Hero” archetype) in young adulthood; and Gen Z (another “Artist” generation) in childhood. The last time this constellation of generational archetypes were in this alignment was during the Great Depression and World War II. Then, the Missionary Generation of FDR (a “Prophet” generation) was in elderhood; the Lost generation of Hemingway (“Nomads”) were in midlife; the G.I. Generation (the so-called “Greatest” Generation, a Hero archetype) were in young adulthood; and the Silent Generation was in childhood.

There is so much more to it, but the point is that history tends to follow patterns based around generations, which means that there is real hope for our nation and culture to emerge from this Crisis in the next ten to twenty years in a totally different place, much as the US emerged from the Depression and World War II into the hitherto unthinkable “High” of the 1950s. It means that while the world is indeed falling apart around us, it’s not the end – the world has fallen apart before, but we emerge like a phoenix from the ashes, in a very different way to how we were before. (The Civil War and the Revolutionary War were also “Crisis” times that were followed by “Highs” where the world was totally different and could not have been predicted.)

Anyway – this was a lot of explanation, but I wanted to share it as a way of telling you that I see some hope for our future, but not immediately. I’ve really drunk Howe’s Kool-Aid, and I believe that he’s onto something. If he’s right, we’ve got another dozen or so years of this Crisis, and there’s a good chance things will get worse before they get better. And while there’s hope, it’s also pretty scary to me what’s coming before then. Like living in winter – spring’s coming, but not for a few months.

And I’ve been pondering my place in the world as I’ve watched with horror what’s happening in Israel and Gaza. And I’ve made the very bad choice of reading social media about it. I joined Threads a few months ago, the Twitter substitute that Meta released. For the first few months, I found it to be a rather friendly place, and surprisingly left-wing. (Or maybe that was just the way the algorithm treated me.) But now everything I see is vicious sanctimony about the war in Israel. Like, seriously vicious. Some people saying that you’re a horrible, horrible person if you think that Israel has done anything wrong. Others saying that you’re a horrible, horrible person if you don’t think that Israel is at fault. People saying that if you don’t stand with Palestine, you are evil. Others saying that if you don’t stand with Israel, you are evil. I need to just stop reading it.

But it makes me so very, very sad to read all this. I have my own opinions about all this, but I’m hesitant to even mention them here, because I really am no expert on any of it, and also because I’m scared that anything I say might bring out rage in my readers. So for now I’ll just pray for people who are scared or grieving in both Israel and Gaza. I hope at least that’s safe to say.

And I’ve been getting outside a bit more than I had been. For the last six weeks or so, I’ve been exploring parks and natural areas in my vicinity that I’d never been to before. I’ve been taking some nice walks in the autumn air, and finding some hidden gems just a few miles from my house. This has been a good thing. I haven’t been walking labyrinths, but I have been walking. That’s something.

Beyond that, I don’t know. I’m just trying to get by. Trying to hold onto some meaning. Trying to keep moving forward. It’s hard sometimes. I wish I had something better for you, something deeper and more enlightening. But right now, that’s what I’ve got. Hopefully it’s enough.