When autumn takes hold of nature, our world is reborn. The same route we walk to class feels utterly transformed, though nothing much has objectively changed. We walk on the same pavement, with the same infrastructure surrounding us, only now the trees that we used to pass by without a glance are demanding our attention with vibrant screams of yellow, orange and red.
After years of watching the seasons go by, you would think that I would stop anticipating fall with such excitement. Maybe the trees would feel less beautiful because they look the same as they did last year, and perhaps the chill of the wind would feel even more unwanted than spring’s rain as we hold onto the remnants of the blazing summer sun. Yet no matter how many fall hikes I take or how long I spend staring at the same leaves, I never tire of autumn. Instead, it brings me closer to acknowledging what we feel in the seasons of our own lives.
In her book “The Wisdom of Anxiety,” anxiety counselor Sheryl Paul challenges the stigma surrounding anxiety by viewing it as a wound of our time. After all, in the span of 31 years, the global incidence of anxiety disorders rose by 52 percent, which is a generational shift, n...