Desolation
... or it's just winter
It’s that time of the year again in the Midwest, where it isn’t very clear what is going to happen next. Like in life, this could go well and mild, or turn bad really quickly. Fall has been here, and winter is knocking on the door —some days, beating on it.
The foliage is dropping quickly, and as I walked through the quiet forest on a Friday, it was snowing leaves. When summer is here and it’s hard to see through the thick overgrown parts of life and woods, you simply miss the beauty of what’s around you. It’s hidden.
What’s the old saying? You don’t know what you have till it’s almost gone? Truth.
With the leaves falling to carpet the hiking path and all you hear is the crunch of your feet, now it’s hard not to notice those towering cottonwoods who’ve been watching over forest wanderers for a few hundred years.
The coming and going of creatures: the squirrels know what’s happening and are busy scurrying around, preparing —hardly time to fight with each other anymore —before the snow flies and the cold winds from the north remind us of how fragile nature and human life really are.
Change is hard.
There are two ways to look at life when you wake up expecting the same perfectly balmy day, and the life that you’ve had for the last little bit. You can look at it as desolation coming to destroy everything —a half-empty type of approach.
Or, you can see it as an opportunity.
The world is crazy, and so is the weather. One minute, everything is fine; the next, the cold wind is slapping you in the face and reminding you that you aren’t so tough and self-assured as you like to think.
We all require a little wake-up call here and there.
Winter is coming, in more ways than one; best get used to it. You can prepare if you like; it might help a little. Batten the hatches, get the blanket, pad the bank account, free up the calendar.
You can only run for so long. It’ll catch you.
Embrace
When you were young, at the first sign of snow, you were jumping and running in it before your mother could even scream after you to put a hat on. Why is that? What would draw a child out into the uncomfortable, the cold, the wet, the miserable?
Is it miserable, or is it just different?
Each season of life brings a different temperature. Hot, cold, medium, just right. Do we hide from it, or embrace it? Look it right in the face and push back. When I woke up to the snow and cold, I put on my coat and hat and forced myself to go for a few freezing miles.
I should apply that same principle in life.
Many parts of life are hard, but it’s best not to hide from it, only makes it worse. I think, over the last 100 years, people have been stripped of their self-reliance and fortitude. The ability to look hardship and heartache in the face and be resolute.
You could run south to escape the cold. You could use the TV and your phone to drown out the nervous uncertainty or pain. Or, you could put on your coat, hike your pants up, and walk straight into the breach.
I don’t think we are as timid and weak as the world would have us believe.
Someone, somewhere, once said that we are “made in the image” of something bigger and larger. It wasn’t a weak or timid thing, I don’t think. The people who have come before us have been through worse and lived harder lives. I think we can manage to buck up and push through.
Ready or not.
Today, at least for now, under my nice warm blanket while the north wind blows hard and the birds huddle in the pine tree, I feel like I’m ready for the next season. That could just be the armchair ease talking; time will tell.
It’s a nice thought anyway, and one I will hold onto.
Work. Life. Friends. Family. Health. Who knows what comes next? Best just to get on with things and settle into that old and lost “can-do” mindset.
My children and I have a mantra we repeat often: “We can do hard things.” Could be big hard things, could be small hard things. It’s the same in the end. We don’t hide from hard, we look it straight in the eye without blinking and step forward, come what may.
Foolish? Maybe, maybe not. No step or decision will ever be right. I’m under no illusion that “I am in control of my own destiny.” Anyone who says that hasn’t lived enough life. But you can be ready to wrestle whatever is coming for you, winter snow and all.