At the beginning of the year, many of us take the decision to make one or more New Year’s resolutions. We make firm pledges to take this or that positive action to improve our lives, or to abstain from doing things that we think might be detrimental to our wellbeing. This can nurture many positive changes – even if, sometimes, the pledges don’t last as long as we intend!

There is, however, a danger in making such promises to ourselves [...]

There’s a poem by Emily Brontë called Fall, Leaves, Fall that embraces the seasonal transition from autumn to winter with open-eyed delight:

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

It’s common for autumn to be presented with subdued and contented melancholy, but from the outset Brontë also rejoices in the familiar associations between winter and the passing of time that only lead in one direction. The falling leaves, dying flowers [...]

We all know the feeling of getting to the end of a project that has been gestating for a long period, whether it is preparing for a musical performance, a long hike up a mountain, or any other achievement that has taken an unusual amount of effort and been long in the making. As we reach the culminating moment of realisation, the moment when we know in our minds and hearts that the preceding months or years of preparation have all led up to this point, the time spent suddenly seems to condense and to feel very short [...]