It is a new month, a fresh start, another beginning. Everybody needs a clean slate every now and again. Thank God we get one every every 30 days or so. There is nothing more inspiring than a blank page. Or perhaps, there is nothing more depressing. It depends, I suppose, on the type of mood you’re in.
I was dying to get outside today, dying to get away from my desk, dying to talk to someone, dying to get away from my own thoughts. I had a hard weekend: sometimes weekends are hard. You feel things you don’t want to feel and think about things you don’t want to think about. The things people claim you’ll laugh about one day are the least funny things when you’re experiencing them in the moment.
There were cheerful flowers blooming in the park. I wonder if there is anyone who hates spring? There must be: people hate everything. And, as they say, you can be the nicest person in the world and someone will still find fault with you. The same must be true about spring but it continues blooming anyway.
Nothing is more precious than new life, than tiny buds, than a blossoming daffodil poking its tiny head out of the cold, damp earth. The world needs more resilience and spring is our biggest inspiration. Time to rebuild, to transform, to flourish. Even the word itself implies a type of energy: a leap, a jump, a forward motion.
The world needs spring, especially this year. Winter was long, it was never ending. It started ages ago, long before the winter solstice, and it’s dragged on and on and on. People are tired; I am exhausted too, in my own way. But things are about to change, I can feel it, everybody can feel it. There is hope in the air, there is a whispered promise, there is redemption, there is new energy.
It is technically still winter but that’s not the point. The point is that we collectively feel the tide turning, we sense that things are shifting, that bad things are getting better. We start to believe again: in ourselves and in each other. Hope is what makes everything better. It’s the one thing that separates the bad days from the good days. Without hope, we are left to stew in our despair, our numbness, our bleakness.
Spring is an excuse to leave our tiny rooms. It is a reason to open the window. It is even an incentive to cut our hair, stay up later, wake up earlier, clean a room, let go of baggage, drink more water, eat more fruit, get more sunshine, read more books, dream up more plans, make fewer excuses.
We long for spring because we long for the opportunity to start over, to make amends, to try one more time. We don’t need spring to do any of these things, of course, but spring reminds us that these things are possible. That is why we need spring.
Things I Learned Growing Up 