The Illusion of Autumn

It paints the world in colors, sets the horizon on fire, and makes us believe we’ve reached the peak of beauty.
At least, that’s what we think.
But in truth, it’s the slowest and most elegant funeral on earth.

The trees aren’t blooming, the leaves aren’t shining.
They are slowly fading, disappearing.
Just like people.
Yet unlike our sorrow, death in autumn puts on a dazzling show.

Maybe that’s why we romanticize it — autumn.
That’s why poets pick up their pens and pour the harmony of colors into their lines;
that’s why photographers chase that golden light.
And we, with our tea or coffee in hand, raise a toast to the spectacle.

We forget the cruel truth hidden beneath that beauty.
Or rather, we want to forget.
It’s a habit born of modern life —
living as if we’ll never vanish, running away from anything that reminds us of the only real thing: the end.
But nothing lasts. Everything fades, everything passes.
The brightest smiles, the sweetest faces, the warmest memories —
they all drift away quietly,
and when the mask falls, the most natural, most ordinary event in the world reveals itself.
What remains is a weight that grows heavier with helplessness —
bewildering, sorrowful, and senseless.

Unlike us, trees do not resist.
Their leaves leave.
They let go of everything that kept them alive, one by one.
The soil swallows it all in silence.
We call it transformation — but it’s really surrender.
That leaf will not return.
That same red, that same light, that same moment — none of them ever come back.

Spring may dress the branches again,
but the actors are different this time.
The leaves that decorate them now are strangers.
They, too, play their parts, adapt to the stage,
and when the time comes — disappear as if they had never lived at all.

And we?
We are no different.
We are always searching for meaning.
Unlike the squirrel or the ant, we try to decorate our endings with the word wisdom.
We call our exhaustion maturity and give our collapse a touch of grace.
But as time passes, pieces of us quietly fall away.
Some parts turn yellow — pleasing to the eye —
while others rot beyond recognition.
And most of all, none of the steps we take can be undone.
Just like the parts we’ve lost, nothing we lose — or will lose — ever truly returns.

Not those smiles.
Not those prayers.
Not the moments we once found funny.
Not the old us.

Life, in truth, dissolves —
like sugar in tea.
Slowly melting, spreading, disappearing.
It doesn’t return.
And the things we think have come back
are never the same —
they are new, fragile, unfamiliar, vulnerable.
Like the leaves crushed beneath our feet —
they leave behind only sound and dust.

Still, autumn is not a cruel season.
On the contrary, it is painfully honest.
It shows us that even endings can be beautiful.
It whispers that permanence is a fairy tale,
and reminds us to value what happens while it lasts.
It shows us that the end is never far away —
just a matter of moments.
Death is not as distant as we pretend it to be.

I sometimes imagine autumn as a character — fearless, shameless, laughing at us.
Mocking our desperate grip, our obsession with meaning.
It bursts into laughter with every falling leaf,
amused by how we treat death as something extraordinary,
how we confuse endings with beginnings,
how romantic we are about what simply is.

It laughs at how easily we believe the lies we tell ourselves.

In memory of those who have left us.