August Reflections: Between Endings and New Beginnings

August doesn’t feel like a month of beginnings to me. It feels too cold to start anything new, and yet, it does—like an echo of the phrase, “Begin even if you’re not ready.” At the very least, August is not June or July, months that, to me, feel more like an endless pause where nothing remarkable seems to happen.

Where I live, August days often bring rain, and even when the sun briefly breaks through, the weather carries an air of hesitation, doubt, and expectation. Perhaps I feel this way about this month because my birthday falls in September. It’s said that, in the days leading up to our birthdays, we unconsciously revisit the darkness before the light—the moment before birth—only now expressed through the small rituals of daily life.

Though the rains linger a little longer, it is in September that they begin to make sense to me. I’d even dare say that, as a society, it is in September that we start to adjust our mindset, preparing to acknowledge what the year has truly brought us.

August is uncomfortable because it reminds me of beginnings and endings, yet it is precisely this discomfort that makes those transitions possible.

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