Everything is changing.

You can have fun in all the cycles of your life if you can learn to enjoy them.

Some changes are so slow that we barely notice them. Others can happen in a moment. But whether a cycle lasts a few seconds, a season, several years, or a lifetime, change does not simply appear out of nowhere. It moves through a process.

An emotion gives rise to a thought. A thought influences an action. An action has a consequence. That consequence becomes part of what happens next.

A seed germinates, grows, flowers, produces seed, and returns to the soil. A relationship begins, develops, and changes. An idea takes shape, gathers energy, becomes something tangible, and eventually reaches a point of completion or transformation.

The length of the cycle may be different, and the details may be different, but the underlying movement remains.

At any one time, we are living within many cycles at once. There is the daily cycle of waking, activity, and rest; the monthly and yearly rhythms marked by calendars, the moon, and seasons; and the larger natural cycle of the Earth, punctuated by solstices and equinoxes.

Alongside these are our own cycles—relationships, work, health, projects, learning, emotions, decisions, and the countless smaller events that make up a life.

We do not need to identify every cycle operating around us. But when we begin to recognize the stage a particular cycle has reached, we can often work with it more intelligently.

A garden makes this obvious. We could try to plant tomatoes outdoors in Nova Scotia in January, but we would be working against almost every condition surrounding them. Plant them when warmth, light, and soil are moving in the same direction, and our efforts become far more effective.

The same principle can apply in less obvious places.

Sometimes the most effective action is to begin. Sometimes it is to build. Sometimes it is to allow something to reach fullness. And sometimes the work is to complete, release, or make room for what follows.

The equinox gives us a useful moment to look at this more closely—not because the cycle begins or ends there, but because it makes change visible.

So perhaps the question is not simply, “What is changing”?

It is: What stage of the cycle am I in, and what does that stage require?