Can We Also Drop Our Old (Be-)Leaves?
Newsletter from September 22, 2025
Hi dear student,
I just traveled to Up-State New York to celebrate my youngest grandson’s 2nd Birthday party. Perfect timing: that means I also arrived for the annual spectacular autumn celebration of this region. Happy Fall Equinox! Happy color explosion!
I purposefully used the word celebration, as if Autumn was a well planned and executed event, which of course it is. But instead of going into a scientific explanation of why the leaves of the trees turn red, yellow and brown before finally dropping to the ground, I’d like to use the metaphoric language of the storyteller again: The trees are celebrating the end of the summer, the season of growing and having exuberant experiences of all sorts. They put on their prettiest clothes with their brightest colors and dance in the autumn breeze to the light of a fading summer sun, until frost and wind will put an end to the festivities.
The trees will eventually drop their leaves and enter a state of hibernation; barren and cold they will stand and withstand the forces of a harsh winter, the season of stillness and introspection. Yet, if we observe carefully, we might also notice that the leaves have been replaced with new buds, the promise of new growth for the coming year.
If that is all too un-scientific for you, let’s boil it down to the essentials. If the trees don’t drop their leaves they will suffer badly. Winter will always destroy the foliage, but not harm the buds, the promise of new growth!
As we are getting increasingly detached from the forces of nature, having light and heat and food at our disposal all year round, we might unfortunately also get overly detached from the deeper wisdom of nature’s endless lessons. The exuberant act of letting go, which trees demonstrate so powerfully, can serve as the best reminder for our own ability and choice to let go. It is engraved in the nature of a tree to automatically let go of old leaves. But we can choose freely! We can decide and learn to actively let go of things, behaviours and believes which do not serve us anymore.
Why bother? Well, even if we truly live the life of our dreams right now, stagnation would eventually get the best of us if we are not willing to shed old leaves and grow new buds.
In our online classes we often discuss the wisdom of trees manifested in the marvelous building material we use to create our wooden puppets. On this path of learning to craft those puppets we have ample opportunity to let go of old limiting behaviours and believes such as: I don’t deserve, I am not talented enough, not good enough, too old, too broke, no time … Trees don’t waste a second in such vane acts of self-sabotage. They just do what trees do: they steadily grow green leaves, turn them yellow and red, let them go and then start all over again. And this is how an acorn turns into a mighty oak.
Wishing you a contemplative and happy Fall Equinox,
Bernd
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