Seasons Of Love
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
I am not into musicals, and I admittedly don’t really know many of them. Even still, “Seasons of Love” hits me in the feels every time I hear it. I’ve never even seen Rent, but I do remember the first time I heard this song from the musical. The middle school version of me felt full body chills while listening to the chorus sing it during a winter concert. My sweet little deeply feeling heart was like, “Wait, I’m supposed to just eat my turkey sandwich and drink my Ssips iced tea in the cafeteria after that?!” Fast forward to this holiday season while navigating a bustling shopping plaza parking lot. Idina Menzel’s version cut through all of the noise. I was brought back to that middle school moment, and was consumed with emotion and reflection while proceeding to listen to it on repeat multiple times.
Measuring a year in love is a simple concept, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do every year. For me, this current season is BRIMMING with the kind of sparkly romantic love to which many of us default when we hear the word “love.” I live in a beautiful apartment with the thoughtful, funny, caring man I get to marry in 2024 and I never take out the trash. We’re in such a fun stage of life: sealing Save the Dates and laughing while cooking dinner. Don’t worry, there’s enough realism injected into my romanticism to know that life is not always going to be filled with this much ease. We are Soaking. It. Up.
There were many seasons where I felt the deep grief that often comes when we’ve experienced loss, or in my case, didn’t have something I deeply desired. I spent many seasons grieving the absence of the sparkly romantic love I am so grateful to have right now. In one of those seasons, I couldn’t even bear to display those joyful photos that my beautiful friends and family sent me in the way that I did this year. The comparison of their chaotic-joyful-stressful-magical holiday season to my lonely one was just too much. The love was hard to find when I was in the thick of those seasons because my focus was on the one kind of love I didn’t have. In my Rent inspired holiday reflection, though, I am able to view even the darkest seasons of my life through a lens of love. You see, I’ve learned that grief and love are very close cousins. Siblings, even. Sure, grief of the life I didn’t have prevented me from hanging up the cards. But my people sent them to me because they love me. I didn’t have a partner to shop for, but my platonic soulmate and I played Santa one night and delivered cookies and cards to the staff at our favorite neighborhood bars because we love them. I didn’t wake up at the crack of dawn to my own kids anxiously waiting to see what Santa brought them, but I have hilarious videos of my youngest sister Bridget and I, full blown adults in Christmas onesies, oohing and ahhing over the gifts “Santa” brought us. A sleepover and Christmas morning at my childhood home with my parents and (now grown) baby sister is love.
My point is: even though it may not be obvious at the time, there is love in every season. Sometimes we just can’t see it when we’re in it.
Which brings me to all of us. Our world is oh-so-very-complicated, and filled with people behind screens tearing down people they don’t even know because of a fraction of the whole picture. How can we simplify? What grievances can we forgive? Who in our life deserves a touch more grace because they are beautifully flawed just like we are? How can we bring more love into our own hearts? Collectively, how can we expand our definition of love so that it heals ourselves, our families, our community, our world?
If you’re in the kind of season where the cards are happily hung with holiday themed clothes pins: I hope that you really breathe it in. Cherish it. Tattoo it on your heart so that you can remember its presence when the light gets dimmer. If you’re in the kind of season where the cards stay in a pile: I promise you the love is there. I promise your people will keep sending it to you even if you can’t hang it on a ribbon. I promise that its dimness is impermanent. I promise you: it will shine brighter soon.
It’s time now, to sing out
Though the story never ends
Let’s celebrate, remember a year
In the life of friends
Remember the love
Song credit: Menzel, I. 2019. Seasons of Love. Christmas: A Season of Love. School Boy Records.
Original song: Larson, J. (1996). Seasons of Love. On Rent: Original Broadway Cast Recording [CD]. New York, NY: DreamWorks.
