The meaning of this season probably won’t show up until you’re driving past it in a few years.

Understanding runs behind experience, always. While something is happening you have only the inside view, which is full of detail and short on shape, and the shape is what meaning is made of. Demanding to know what a hard stretch is for while you are still in it is asking for something that is not available yet.

Rather than interpreting the present, keep a record of it. Write a few honest lines now and then, without conclusions. The meaning will arrive on its own schedule, and the notes are what let you recognize it when it does.