seasons

As I lay shivering under the covers, winter my constant unwelcome guest, I wondered to myself why seasons even exist and wouldn't it be wonderful, if there was just one perfect temperature all year around (and I do mean lovely-perfect). Then we wouldn't have to expend so much energy being too cold, or too hot, or working to drive away either extreme. Which of course led me to the whole la-di-da about spring bringing fertility and renewed life after a long spell of winter (flowers budding, fruits ripening, young new leaves with the requisite frehsness of dewdrops etc).

Autumn, a time of reflection and nostalgia and reconnection, my favorite season for remembering what-has-beens as the days lengthen their shadows and the leaves flutter one by one into aged dust on the ground.

Winter, washing in a torrent of life-bringing water and mind-numbing cold. A season of suffering, especially for the unroofed and homeless, the most thankful of the seasons for me, but also the dreariest, bleakest, and most depression-inducing.

Spring, a time of hope and awakenings, of fairies and new birth and all things possible and impossible. A time of new resolution and of stirring activity, the most promising and delivering of all the seasons.

Summer, a dry spell in which the heat promotes lethargy, viscosity, and languidity. Lazy days in the sunshine and falling asleep upon one's dreams and ambitions, with an ice-cold pina colada by your side.

Which then led me to wonder if perhaps the emotions and experiences of us humans too, can be modeled by the necessary and cyclical influences of the four seasons. That our happy moments are necessarily tempered by periods of routine coldness and barrenness so it can purge the weaknesses within us and spring forward only the newest, toughest buds and the sweetest, ripest fruit.

We all go through similar cycles: renewed motivation & hope (spring), a resulting placidity/resting on laurels (summer), nostalgia & reflection upon mistakes (autumn), suffering & tears as consequences (winter)... repeat. And that this is somehow always dependably cyclical (which means that that spring always comes again, after the bleariest of winters).

The mental image I drew from this metaphor is so breathtaking as to almost make me feel somehow comforted. I think too much. I should sleep.