Seasons and Stages🌷

But when it comes to our lives, we are not nearly as clear.

In Western culture, we have reduced life to three anemic stages: childhood, adulthood, and retirement. A simple progression of learning, working, and then slowly fading.

As I am in my early 60s, the thought of fading into irrelevance makes my soul recoil. My essence knows I have never had more contribution to make than now.

There is a deeper, richer lens to look at this through, one that has existed for thousands of years in Hindu philosophy.

It speaks to four distinct stages of life.

The first is the Student (Brahmacharya), a season to learn all you can so you can carry the wisdom of the elders forward.

The second is the Householder (Grihastha), a sacred season of responsibility. It is a time to deepen your duty to family by creating stability and love, to contribute meaningfully to your community, and to develop your profession with intent, building, refining, and offering your work in a way that strengthens the world around you.

Then comes the stage that changed everything for me.

The Seeker (Vanaprastha).

This is where you step away, not to disappear, but to finally hear. It requires creating space from the noise and constant demands of life so you can sit long enough to discover what is true. Who you really are. What your relationship is with the divine. What you were placed here to do.

My wife and I chose to step into this stage. We simplified our lives, removed what no longer felt aligned, and intentionally created distance from the noise and clutter that had accumulated. We often referred to this time as being teenagers with a checkbook. It was not about escape. It was about refinement. It was about returning to what is true.

And once you know who you are, once you understand your relationship with the divine, you can step back into your life with confidence.

That leads to the final stage.

The Sage (Sannyasa).

This is not a stage of withdrawal, but one of quiet strength. It is marked by clarity rather than noise, by presence rather than performance. There is no need to prove. There is simply a steady, grounded way of being that lifts others through example, through listening, and through lived wisdom.

What strikes me this morning is how naturally we honor the seasons of the earth, yet how often we resist the stages of our own lives. We cling to what was, we rush toward what is next, and we rarely stand fully in where we are.

Spring does not try to be winter, and winter does not apologize for being cold.

So here is my invitation.

Know your season. Own your stage. Live it fully.

Do not rush it. Do not resist it.

There is purpose, real purpose, in exactly where you are.

“I stepped away not to abandon my life, but to find it. In the quiet, stripped of noise and expectation, I began to see clearly, who I was, what mattered, and how I wanted to return. And when I did return, it was not with force, but with clarity.”

From BlindSighted: A Journey of Identity, Faith, and Healing

With clarity,

Rich Christiansen

P.S. Where are you in your own four stages, and what does the next one look like for you?