The Joy of Underperforming

For many of us—the vitamin-D-deprived, the sugar-addled, perhaps the suddenly jobless or those dreading family gatherings—’tis the season not so much to be jolly, but just to be “in a season.” The phrase has become a common way of talking yourself through a sudden upheaval, or of explaining that you’ll be doing things a little differently for a while.

Diddy is in “a season of total independence” because he has “come too far to ask somebody that isn’t where I’m from about cultural and artistic things.” The expression can fend off societal pressures (“I’m in a season of really wanting to … enjoy this phase of our relationship,” the singer Becky G said in March after getting engaged) or tacitly ask for space (after the actor Lupita Nyong’o’s breakup in October, she found herself “in a season of heartbreak.”)

You might have noticed this phrasing if you are a Christian, or run in Christian-adjacent circles, where it seems especially prominent. Many believers that they are, for example, “going through a hard season” or are in a “season of singleness”—a reference to the Elisabeth Hasselbeck when she left Fox News in 2015.)