If you’ve never gone your whole life without color, you cannot possibly relate to my predicament over Autumn. Kermit the Frog said it wasn’t easy being green, but what is even harder is to grow up in a state with a perpetual summer, where every day of every week of every season is the plainest, ugliest, most uninspiring color of green you’ve ever seen. After a while, the color green becomes a gray reminder that there is nothing more colorful to look forward to…

It is the hardest thing for me to drive along these rainy streets and not pull over to gaze at this wonder which is all around me. This color, this absolute riot of color, seems to beckon my attention at every turn. I seldom notice anything else now. Just a blood red oak, a neon yellow leaf that floats casually to the road as if taking a mid-day stroll…the oranges blazing like cool fires on hills and tree-lined streets.

If you have never seen color your whole life, and then one day you wake up to these vibrant testaments of God’s existence strewn about like little love notes, then you will not know what it is like to see beauty like this and know how fortunate you are to see it, to be filled up by it. If you are driving by it today, cursing traffic and looking at your watch, you are missing something which no Floridian would ever take for granted. Look out your window and give your eyes fully to what must not be missed, ever. I hope you see it. I hope you never forget one moment of the changing of those leaves.

Vibrant, blasting color…heralding an absolute agony, right before dying.