The Snow

 

The snow finally started falling here after days of weathermen telling us to anticipate its arrival. Storms where the snow falls in blankets from the clouds still have the power to fill me with child-like glee and contentedness. There is something about sitting at the very base of the mountains and the accumulation of moisture which sits, seemingly forever, above the mountains before dumping sheets and sheets of puffy white flakes on the houses below. There is a calm and a peace and a reset to its arrival that I will always relish. I always wish, of course, that the storm will result in four feet of accumulation and will utterly shut life as we know it down because, up until the last year, those pauses from ordinary have always felt like an allowance for the entirety of our society to take a deep breath and reflect.

Almost a year ago the entirety of the world was forced to take a time out, but this one didn't end when the streets were plowed enough to allow for traffic. This one has yet to end. And I don't think the world that existed prior to March 13th is even a possibility anymore. I think we are about to encounter and create a new one, with different rules around infection and proximity and hygiene, but also around social justice and the obligations of a government to its people and, I hope, a new perspective on the value of life and human compassion. I fundamentally believe that the world we are about to create has limitless potential and that the hardest lessons of all our lives hold some of the most valuable lessons.

Resilience. Fear. Strength. Community. Family. Privilege. Hardship. Depression. Anxiety. Sleeplessness. Hope. Grace. Faith. Obligation. Grit. These are the words that have defined my last year. They are words that I've had to consider in a deeper way than ever before because of what the last eleven months asked of me and took from me and forced me to confront. And I hope, in a guttural way, that others have also been considering these words which have been seemingly omnipresent in daily life over the last year.

I am something of a naturalist in that I fundamentally believe if we pay attention there is much to be learned (but mostly to remember) about ourselves in the plants and animals and trees that surround us. I think one of the things about snow that I find so wonderful is the forced pause and then the fresh-start of it all. The world is unmarked and unmarred and it is so very, very quiet in the middle. Before you return to your normal activity, it's as if the entire world is taking a deep breath not of its own volition but because it simply must. 

We find ourselves one year into a deadly and life-altering pandemic in the middle of a protracted and traumatic great pause. We are living the middle of that enormous breath. We are here, now, and present in this opportunity to peer in the mirror and look at the face that gazes back. 

Have we given one another all the things owed? Have we cared for one another while meditating, constantly, on one another's humanity and inherent value and beauty? Have we treated loved ones with whom things have been troubled with care and compassion? Have we been gentle with ourselves and with nature and with those around us, even when the chasm of difference can feel unscalable?

And perhaps most importantly: have you been gentle with yourself? Have you dared peer into that living, beating, exalting heart of yours and asked yourself about the darkest hurts and gazed upon them with courage and determination to drag them into the light, no matter the pain or discomfort? Have you forgiven yourself your sins? Have you afforded yourself the infinite grace of being human and imperfect and ever-wanting? Have you stopped in the dark of the night and screamed at your spinning mind to cease and held yourself in an embrace of self-love that is your due as a breathing, fighting, human who has been battling their way to the surface for the last twelve months? 

We are living through the middle of a truly great pause and we each have a decision about what our lives and the life for those around us will look like afterward. Part of the joy of snow is the limitless potential of that afterward. Each flake is perfectly placed on enormous open sheets of undisturbed white. As far as the eye can see, everything appears to exist precisely as it should, with each flake landing precisely in a spot where it is both a part of the whole and is also everything on its own. 

And this is the truth that can be hard to embrace because life can be so very, very hard. You (yes, you, sitting exactly where you are) are a part of this infinite picture and in the middle of this great pause and you, along with the rest of us human beings, have some very large decisions to make about where we are headed and how we will think about important questions like how much we owe to one another and how much we want to care for one another and how much humanity we see in the other even when the other is something we have vilified for a long, long time.

We have questions to answer about how much grace we will offer ourselves and how many sins we are worthy of forgiving (it's a trick question because the answer is all of them). And we have work to do to help those around us as we all pick up the pieces after this great, long breath.

This great storm, this one that has brought us to our knees, offers us all the opportunity to be more kind, more loving, and more generous than we were before. It offers us a moment to recreate and redefine the lives we have made and the society we have constructed.

I still don't know, exactly, what I will look like after the last flake has fallen, but I sincerely hope it is a rendition of myself that is a little softer, a little kinder, and a little more forgiving. I hope that I carve time into my life for friends who have moved far away and family I have neglected for far too long. I hope that I care more deeply for those around me who are struggling and that I embrace community and aim to incorporate all of humanity into my concept of who is included in that tribe. I hope I confront the ugliest parts of myself head on and embrace grace for the moments where I fall short (infinitely short) of the mark. I hope I love more, more, more and exude that in every interaction and in every moment for the days I have remaining. And because I know that I will not, I hope that I never stop trying. I hope that I climb, ceaselessly and tirelessly up, up, up and run like hell from complacency and apathy.

I hope that I have loved you enough and that I will love you enough. I hope that you have known that love in every breath and heart beat and song in your body. And when this storm is over, truly over, I hope that you'll bundle up and join me as the last of that breath is exhaled and we can relish the storm's end and the beginning of something entirely new. An entirely new that you and me and you have the opportunity to imagine.