The Seasons of a Life

And the idea there, according to the commentators — the interesting thing about the beginning of that prayer — is this. What is happening is that the sun is rising; it reaches the midpoint of the sky; and then it begins its decline. And the idea is that that is an indication for the human being that, just as the sun does, we rise up, we reach our full strength and power, and then we begin to decline; and sunset is cosmologically seen as death — the idea that death is imminent, that death is coming. And so the shade itself is seen as an indication of our own lives: that just as we rise in the east, we will also set in the west. And so the day itself has traditionally been described by the Muslims cosmologically. They say that the mid-morning is like spring: it is like the child coming into existence. Spring is a fun time; it is generally a time of renewal, and it is a time of innocence, and traditionally there is a lot of folklore about people falling in love in spring and doing these things, because it is an innocent time; that is how it is associated in folklore. And then summer is seen as coming into youth. It is a time of work; it is a time of harvest. Youth is when one has a lot of energy to begin to harvest one's crops; so it is a time of study, a time of dedication, a time of exerting a lot of effort. And then the fall is seen as moving now into maturity, and this is the time when one benefits from the fruits of the youth that one harvested: the mind begins to mature in a way that one now becomes conscious, and begins to use the wisdom of one's youth in various ways. Erikson's model is interesting here: he talks about this period as being productivity versus stagnation^***** — that people begin to think beyond themselves as they reach into this mature period of around forty. And interestingly, the Muslim worldview does demarcate the year forty as the year in which perception begins to change, in which one begins to get outside one's egotistical youth and begins really to look beyond one's personal welfare and benefit, and really asks: how can my life be meaningful? And ultimately, meaning in life arises out of service, out of going beyond the self, out of asking what one's contribution is going to be to one's society, to one's family, to one's culture, to one's tradition. This is the period of the fall, and it is a beautiful period, because it is a maturing, and it is when there is variation in colour: the changing of the leaves, and all these things. It is a very interesting time, the fall. And then winter, which is moving into that last period of life: the dryness; the leaves fall; the body begins to wear, and we enter into that last period of our lives. And then death; and then, according to the Muslims, rebirth in the next world, which would be the renewal — and spring is the sign of that. So one can see how, in the prayer, there is this cosmology embedded.