“I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in turn, seems the loveliest.” Mark Twain
An unexpected fill in for an outstation workshop had resulted in the journey to the city of my high school days, one of my Alma maters. Landing at the airport, with the cold winds and temperatures dropping down fast, the journey had caught me unawares especially as the winter winds had long left my residence towards the first month of the year. Acclimatizing to the sudden change makes one realize the manifold faces of nature.
“In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.” Toni Morrison
Like the sudden change of the winds, so does the emotions and complexity of those moments. Experiences in life bring forth the faces of emotions from within. From the quiet feelings of contentment to blooming happiness as the uneasiness, anger and fury at difficult situations, life takes one on a myriad of emotions similar to the roller coaster ride of nature. One needs all the bad to feel the beauty of the good. Like the pristine winter white can echo the contentment as well as loneliness, so does the fledgling spring echo the new life in the bleak canvas as well the blistering heat of summer which bring out the joy of outdoors to the prequel of the rains of autumns cold but leave a touch of colour when there. One needs them all to feel complete. For contentment doesn’t come when we have the best of the best, but learn to appreciate the present in the midst of the worst.
The Human Seasons
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness–to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
John Keats
Sugar And Spice... Among Other Things 