Why Does Autumn Bring Melancholy?

One more year is gone. I'm getting older. especially looking at the falling leaves, shrinking, drying out of the branches. All those beautiful trees are dying, even though they'll come back next year. But just like my life, getting older and older, that triggers the sorrow, bottom of the heart... Next one I want to introduce one very interesting but important idea or way of thinking or aesthetic image or imagery in Chinese called 意象(yì xiàng), as the mind picture. If I were to translate 意象(yì xiàng), it's called autumn melancholy, melancholy, autumn melancholy. Why in autumn people feel like sad, or the sorrow of autumn, autumn melancholy, or the sorrow of autumn? Why? If your Chinese is better, you can start to read a lot of Chinese ancient poems and also classics or the prose poems, and you will see a lot of beautiful, beautiful pieces. They're showing the same thing, called 悲秋(bēi qiū), the sorrow of autumn. There's a lot of different kinds of explanation, but one thing, what I want to share with you, you cannot find it on internet, even… you use all kinds of whatever AI, cannot find. Let me share with you, why a especially gentlemen. It's for both gentlemen and ladies, but especially for gentlemen. Because in ancient China, all the scholars, they have that kind of ambition, that kind of dream. They studied very hard. And one thing, they want to learn from the ancient saints, different dynasties, different timing, all those saints, to help them to understand themselves and the cosmos, improve the inner quality of themselves. That's one of the biggest dream. The second biggest dream is because of all of this, they have the knowledge and build up their capability and even techniques, or learning the strategies, and they want to be government officials, joining the national test, national examination, to join the government, to assist the emperor at different levels of governance, to help, to serve the people in the nation. At that time, it's called 天下(tiān xià). It's called serving the people under the sky. In spring, we shared with you, it's happening everywhere, not just ancient China, even no matter West or East. Every New Year, the new spring comes, everybody has a New Year's resolution. Have a plan. Then start to do it and go follow the heavenly change or cosmic change outside. In summer, a lot of energy, do a lot of things, very busy, okay, working very hard. And to get into the autumn, it's time to start harvest, to reflect: what have I done right, what have I done not that right, what I missed, and to reflect, to summarize, to analyze. And also it's a time to look at all the things in Mother Nature. On one hand, harvesting started because you see all the fruits, your fruits ripen, you see all the crops ripen. So what have I achieved? If you're doing good, if you're doing well, okay, this one, I consider I did it. I tried my best. But on the other hand, the leaves start falling, the branches of trees drying out, everything, all the plants are dying, the birds are flying away to the place they want to go, stay there, prepare, and all the birds, all the animals prepare for winter. And you feel kind of everything's shutting down. Then when you reflect yourself, so what have I achieved? There are always something you regret or something you missed out. You do too much on this perspective and forgot about that perspective, and you offend somebody unnecessarily. You neglect somebody or something unpurposely, and you feel sad. That's the source of this 悲秋(bēi qiū), sorrow of autumn. Always you cannot achieve what you can. And one more year is almost gone, because in the winter, in ancient times, there's nothing or there are very few things you can do. What you can do is to stay at home, stay warm and read more books and do more reflection. One more year is gone. I'm getting older. One more year is gone. I'm getting older. The timing for harvesting and reflecting. So that triggers that kind of sorrow and kind of sadness, especially looking at the falling leaves, shrinking, drying out of the branches. All those beautiful trees are dying, even though they'll come back next year. But just like my life, getting older and older, that triggers the sorrow, bottom of the heart, triggers the sorrow and sadness about life, the meaning of life. That is the source of this sorrow of autumn, melancholy, the autumn melancholy, okay? And that reflects all this kind of feeling, emotion, or understanding, or reflection, reflected in poems, prose, and the beautiful pieces throughout the history, generation after generation and generation, become a beautiful phenomenon, expression. It's aesthetic expression. It's a system. It's like tragedy, the drama, kind of in ancient Greek, sadness. It's one of the eternal, eternal topics of human beings. Just you look at it from different perspectives, all right? Ancient Greeks, when they focus on the fate of no matter individual or as human beings, they feel sad. So they have all kinds of tragedy, the drama coming out, right? Even to Shakespeare. But in Chinese history, dynasty after dynasty, generation after generation, this is one of the main topics, or one of the aesthetic expressions. This is a system, and called autumn melancholy, or the sorrow of autumn. So you want to have some idea about that if you want to learn more really authentic Chinese. So this is a scholar reflecting in Mother Nature. He was looking at all the birds flying away. You see all the falling leaves of the tree. He's reflecting his behavior in the past almost three quarters of a year. Or even think more, past couple of years, because every year, they never return.