Words of wisdom · 3:44pm Dec 17th, 2015
This is something my friend just wrote on Facebook and I feel it warrants attention.
So last night I decided to take a walk in the snow...at about 1:20 AM. (I don't necessarily recommend this for everyone; I live in a pretty safe area, the snow would have alerted me to anyone's approach, and I actually know how to fight). It wasn't something I planned, just a spur of the moment thing. Almost a compulsion. I wanted to go pray a rosary while walking in the snowfall. As I wandered up the main street, I was struck by the near total silence. Besides my own footfalls and the occasional passing car, it was quiet, leaving me alone with my prayers and musings. I was struck, as I often am, but how much I love the winter. I really always have, and who could blame me? I ski, take walks, and have the writing/philosophical juices stimulated by snow. But, at a deeper level than that, I love the ethos of winter. For winter is the season of renewal. The world rests preparing for a new dawn and readying the new life that is to come. On one hand it is cold and harsh, yes. But underneath that is a sense of warmth and purity. The starkness of the season, to me, reveals truths in simple terms, making abstract concepts accessible in the silence of the snowfall. And yet, there is an element of melancholy that has increasingly hampered my enjoyment of the season over the years. A frustration with first the haste with which the tranquility is often destroyed, and the knowledge that this great time of year must pass away as time marches on. This could be represented in some ways by the way that cars, rain, and muck will mar the once pristine snow-covered landscape before the coming spring ultimately melts it away. This is not merely an aesthetic or practical melancholy, but in one sense a metaphysical one. It represents, to me, a sadness of endings.
For me, the best part of a good story is often the beginning, where the heroes haven’t yet confronted their fears, where the pieces are just being set in motion, and where the story has so much yet to be told. The ending of any good book is bittersweet for me, and I find myself longing for a time when I still had the newness of the experience before me, like a field of untouched snow. I’ve never much cared for serious changes in my life, and while there are many things I love about growing and maturing, there is always a part of me that is sad when a part of my life comes to a close, never to return.
And yet, as I walked the silent streets last night, I had a bit of an epiphany as I prayed. Yes, winter, and what it represents do me, will end. Doors will close. Chapters of my life will be relegated to the past. But each year winter returns again, bringing with it new beginnings, new stories to tell. Sometimes they’re not as good; sometimes there’s less snowfall than before. But sometimes it’s better and, if nothing else, it is an opportunity to move forward to new and better stories; moving the plot along, so to speak.
It is true that all things must come to an end. But it is also true that there will always be new beginnings, new stories to be told, and that is a wonderful thing. And those of us who believe in an afterlife believe that one day we can join a grand new story that has no end, only greater and greater new beginnings. Even those who aren’t believers can still find comfort in the thought that new beginnings will continue long after they are gone and, if they leave a good legacy, they can in some ways live on in the new beginnings of others.
So my advice to you all is this. Slow down. Take a moment to enjoy the fresh snowfall. But don’t become so obsessed with making the most of it that you forget to simply enjoy it. Don’t worry about how much snow or how little snow you will get; don’t worry about how good this current chapter of the story is. Simply take the time to appreciate it for what it is. Don’t borrow trouble by fretting that you aren’t spending your precious time perfectly so that you get ‘the most out of your time’ and make what you think should be a ‘perfect day’ perfect (something I’ve often been guilty of, to the point that I don’t enjoy what little time I have at all). Just take things as they come. Love your new beginnings, and learn to love the endings as well, for they themselves promise new beginnings of their own to follow. Life is short. If we spend all our time obsessing about making each part of it perfect, or pining for past chapters that can never be reopened, we’ll never enjoy the here and now, and will look to the future with bitterness rather than excitement. Love the past, but don’t live in it. Love the moment, but be prepared to part with it. In all things, be joyful, for joy need not only come in happy times. It can be found in the cold, the bleak, the stark. It can be found, as I have found it, in the stillness of winter, but in the noise of the other seasons as well. Love life, whatever it does to you, for no matter how bad things get it is always worth living, and always full of new beginnings.
Indeed.