As we near the holidays and a barrage of familiar tunes finds its way into our daily soundtrack, my nostalgia and excitement for the season bumps up against the anticipation and anxiety that often accompany the end-of-year bustle: deadlines, back-to-back concerts, exams, gift-buying. All of this at a time when the natural world is winding down, the light is getting shorter, the leaves have fallen; as if we existed in a parallel world, we barrel toward a hard stop and likely some form of exhaustion.

It’s not the familiar tunes that manage to slow me down in this season. It’s the tunes I don’t expect, the stories I haven’t heard, and the wise backdrop of a forest of trees that know enough to save up for the next cycle of growth. These things are dissonant with the typical hum and hustle of the season; they make me look up and consider the alternative.

Dissonance is not a fixed idea. 

It is fully defined by context, by what has been normalized, and what happens to be co-existing in a given moment, in a given place. Two things pushing against each other until one gives way to the other. And whether it is a rule or habit or assumption that governs the situation, there is usually a way we expect it to resolve. But what if it resolved unexpectedly?