Weather I Don’t Like

I know better than to complain about the weather but yesterday felt like winter and I didn’t like it one bit. The cold and the wind were too much for me. In fact, the temperatures and the weather patterns this whole spring are not what I would like them to be at all. I long for the gentle warmth and soft sunshine—for my little seedlings that are trapped indoors, huddling under grow lights and by southern windows—and for me.

I love April when it is warm with just a touch of cool. Those days before the heat of the summer when I can go outside and feel the earth releasing herself to the coming warmth. My body unclenches in places I didn’t know were clenched. The ground softens under my feet. With each step I sink in just a fraction and am viscerally reminded that I too belong here. I too, like the plants and the trees, like the bugs and the squirrels, I too am once again coming back to life. Even the moist air of a cool spring morning seems to nourish me with each breath.

Needless to say, it was not like that yesterday. The wind was harsh and the temperatures were positively wintery. My eyes watered each time I went out. I was cold even with my winter jacket on. I was cold all day, even inside.

Most everything that happened seemed wrong or out of kilter. I was reminded of a long Saturday afternoon many decades ago when I was in my early twenties and by myself. I felt left out and alone; like something good was going on somewhere else. I distinctly remember going to several different places to try to feel differently. And everywhere I went, I felt as if I was missing out on something else. I finally had the realization that I was just feeling left out and that there appeared, that day, to be nothing I could do about it. I was relieved to go home and stop trying to make it different.

While there’s not much return on complaining about the weather, that doesn’t stop me from sometimes getting lost in complaining about the weather. Spending time in the land of complaint is its own kind of internal weather. I learned long ago, and have to relearn again from time to time, that sometimes, there’s nothing to be done but to make your home where you are.

So today, my encouragement for us all is to notice the weather (both external and internal) and, whatever it is, to let it be. Complaining is just complaining. Ease is just ease. Life is simply expressing itself first in this form, then it that form. Can this be enough? Can we appreciate the preciousness of brevity of life in exactly the form that is appearing now? And when we can’t, can we appreciate that too?