Winter appears as a time of concealment. In spring, life bursts forth in front of our eyes in many magnificent colors, as trees leave and flowers bloom, and people leave their shelters for the sunshine. What revelations does winter offer? In the cold snap that has lasted the past two weeks, I have sat in the cold, wondering this. After some days, I started noticing a few things. First, it reveals breath. As a kid, I always enjoyed that “fake cigarette” that comes with stepping outside on a cold day. Every exhale is a bit more exciting, seeing its unique shape emerge in a jet of white, gone in an instant into the sky.
In those streaks of white, something else can be detected — the fragility of life. Our breath, our life force, is constantly escaping us. The difference of a few degrees can throw off our whole mode of existence, push the limits of our endurance. In a constant onslaught of cold air on skin, daily life can be almost intolerable. Cold air, a novel luxury in the summer months, looms like death itself when there is no escape back into the heat. It reveals how much we need each other, how much we need in general, in order to sustain our lives. It’s a humbling realization.
It’s interesting that we start our year on such a note, far away from the advent of spring. The early Romans saw this span of the year as so featureless that they gave it no months, leaving it an undefined void reaching to the new year’s proper beginning in March. In the past, I’ve always perceived it as those Romans did, as a bleak void after the brief, bright joy of the winter holidays. Yet I think beginning the year here speaks to a deeper truth — that the color and vibrancy of the world does not emerge effortlessly, instantaneously; it is something planted in a blank wilderness, which grows slowly in the soil of patience and faith. Life doesn’t begin when it is seen; it begins when it is believed in. We must breathe for some time before it becomes visible.
In those streaks of white, something else can be detected — the fragility of life. Our breath, our life force, is constantly escaping us. The difference of a few degrees can throw off our whole mode of existence, push the limits of our endurance. In a constant onslaught of cold air on skin, daily life can be almost intolerable. Cold air, a novel luxury in the summer months, looms like death itself when there is no escape back into the heat. It reveals how much we need each other, how much we need in general, in order to sustain our lives. It’s a humbling realization.
It’s interesting that we start our year on such a note, far away from the advent of spring. The early Romans saw this span of the year as so featureless that they gave it no months, leaving it an undefined void reaching to the new year’s proper beginning in March. In the past, I’ve always perceived it as those Romans did, as a bleak void after the brief, bright joy of the winter holidays. Yet I think beginning the year here speaks to a deeper truth — that the color and vibrancy of the world does not emerge effortlessly, instantaneously; it is something planted in a blank wilderness, which grows slowly in the soil of patience and faith. Life doesn’t begin when it is seen; it begins when it is believed in. We must breathe for some time before it becomes visible.
