Autumn, Old Gods, Death, and Littlest Pet Shops

Statue representing Janus Bifrons in the Vatican Museums. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen. Used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license (URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

By Samuel Whinnem

Change is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “to undergo transformation, transition, or substitution” (“Change, v.”). When we transition from one point in our life to another, it can feel like we are abandoning all familiarity for something risky. We may try to cling to things that do not serve us anymore, because at least they are familiar.

A few years ago, I had just started driving and college after three gap years where I had no direction. Going into college, I had no direction, and it felt like all my high school friends had matured and moved on without me. While we still talked, I saw they made new friends, while I stagnated. Around this time, my parents encouraged me to give some of my childhood toys away. I resisted and kept a box of Littlest Pet Shop toys in a box under my bed. After a few years of college, I finally figured out my major. I gained my own new friends, gained new relationships, and a direction to move forward; and with that, I feel I am ready to let go of those small plastic animals under my bed. Autumn, old gods, tarot cards, and even those toys have all helped me reckon with why letting go is necessary for becoming who I am.

My favorite band lately, Caligula’s Horse, came out with their album Rise Radiant in 2020. The second to last song, “Autumn,” shows the bittersweet feelings about going through change. The lines “Nothing falls into stillness / Time is the motion / […] In the sum of our silence / Time waits for no one” (Caligula’s Horse, “Autumn”) are about how everything is constantly changing, in motion. If you try to wait behind, time will catch up to you and make you move; you cannot keep it from progressing.

In my own life, I have had many bad habits I struggled to shed, even while in therapy. I learned I had people holding me back, and once I stopped talking to them it was like my life sprung into motion; I was overwhelmed with the vastness of opportunity and messily made a choice to get myself started on progress. I picked out some basic classes at the closest community college and began my first semester. From there, it gave me the outlet to join clubs and meet new people. I started hobbies I had been interested in for years but never had the resources to start. I found which classes I liked, which ones I did not like, and figured out my major. Feeling the world move on without you is an incredibly uncomfortable situation, and I hated feeling responsible for needing to unstick myself from my situation.

In Roman mythology, change took the form of the two-faced god Janus. He is also the god of doorways, the new year, endings, and beginnings. When someone transitions to the next phase of their life, Janus was the one who took care of it. The temple to Janus was always kept open so he could aid in the near non-stop amount of war (Matyszak). Open doorways are associated with an invitation, and the thought of change being represented by such a welcoming symbol feels soothing. Janus, with two faces, looks both at the future and past, often represented with one youthful face and the other aged. To me, that allows us mortals to focus on the present without forgetting the lessons of the past or future possibility.

The Death card in tarot, in its upright position, symbolizes “transformation, endings, change, transition, letting go, release” (Gong). Inverted, it means the opposite, the fear of change. Before I had learned the meaning, I thought it was a morbid card that predicted a literal death, rather than a metaphorical one. It is the idea that if one thing should begin, something must end. A tree cannot blossom and bear fruit unless it first sheds its leaves and lays bare for winter. When you pull the Death card, it means you must let some things go to progress. You cannot cling to the past and expect to keep truly moving forward; you need to be prepared to accept progress for it to mean anything. In my case, that “death” can be as simple as finally boxing up old toys or as challenging but necessary as ending a friendship that no longer lets me grow.

I have always struggled to clean my room, to “purge” my belongings. I used to feel like I had an attachment to each stuffed animal, each graphic t-shirt, that even when I stopped playing with them or outgrew my clothes, I was resistant to give them up. When I did not give them up, my toy boxes and dresser drawers soon overflowed, and my parents would sit with me to go through everything to pick out what should stay and what should go. This helped, but I struggled more when it came to more intangible things to let go of.

Growing up, my friend group was full of drama. Every week, it felt like there was a new fight at the lunch table, and yet when one friend left to go to a different high school, I felt betrayed in some way. Still, we stayed in touch, and as I reconnected with friends from summer camp, this friend made her own high school friends. At any parties I went to at her house, I felt isolated, pushed to the outside. It was not until I stopped talking to her that I started to appreciate the friends I did have, and I blossomed in my classes (to the best of my ability). Still, it was not my choice to detach from this friend; it was the circumstance. Looking back, the emotional clutter of that friendship closely resembles the overfull toy box: familiar, but leaving little room for anything new.

How much can you leave behind of something before it is something completely new? The Ship of Theseus paradox, also known as “George Washington’s / Abe Lincoln’s / my grandfather’s axe theory,” asks if everything about something has been replaced, is it the same object? (Levin). Extending this to ourselves, this can be why change is so difficult. We hold our own identity close to us; it is who we are. Logically, we know moving on does not make us a new person. However, it can absolutely feel like you are shedding your previous identity.

While discussing the point of this essay with my father, he brought up a good metaphor: what we let go of is more like stepping stones in our journey through life. Our experiences with them help us along our way, and the issues start when we stop on the old stones. The stones are decidedly part of our path, but not our destination, and staying parked on one too long presents the risk of becoming stone-like ourselves when there is a more revitalizing option going forward.

The ideas of change, transition, progress are in everything we see. In most things, it is incredibly slow. For me, it feels like I wake up one morning and some leaves have seemingly turned orange overnight, and before I know it the ground glitters with frost at night, before it all melts away and the air is thick with pollen. The most I can do is try to move with the passage of time, keep signing up for things, applying, working on what comes next. Sure, rest is good, but taking three years off felt more like being lost in a crowd than a vacation. Even as I stayed still, everything and everyone kept moving, and now I am just starting to catch up.

But maybe I will soon find a home for those Littlest Pet Shop toys under my bed. To quote “Autumn” by Caligula’s Horse again, “So who am I to stay the colours as they change? / To call for silence in my pride / And bring stillness to sunrise?” (Caligula’s Horse, “Autumn”). The song, the season, the gods, and the cards all seem to intone a similar message: I cannot freeze the world, only choose whether to move with it.

Works Cited

Caligula’s Horse. “Autumn.” Rise Radiant, written by Sam Vallen, 22 May 2020. YouTube, youtu.be/-sIJExhTlUQ?si=CqG-NAxj9b2wIR6c. Accessed 5 Dec. 2025.

Gong, Tina. “Death Meaning – Major Arcana Tarot Card Meanings.” Labyrinthos, Mar. 2007, labyrinthos.co/blogs/tarot-card-meanings-list/death-meaning-major-arcana-tarot-card-meanings. Accessed 4 Dec. 2025.

Levin, Noah. “Ship of Theseus.” Introduction to Philosophy, Tulsa Community College, 18 Jan. 2021, open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/ship-of-theseus/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2025.

Matyszak, Philip. Gods and Goddesses of Greece and Rome: A Guide to the Classical Pantheon. Thames & Hudson, 2022.

“Change, v.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, 2019, www.oed.com. Accessed 23 May 2026.

Vallen, Sam. “Exclusive: Caligula’s Horse Go Track by Track through Their ‘Status Quo’ Challenging Album ‘Rise Radiant.’” The Music, 22 May 2020, themusic.com.au/news/caligulas-horse-rise-radiant-track-by-track-sam-vallen/hhqSmJuanZw/22-05-20. Accessed 5 Dec. 2025.

Sam Whinnem is a sophomore at CT State Tunxis.