I’ve had ample opportunity recently to hear people disgruntled about the weather:
… shoveling snow, cabin fever, impassable roads, power outages, frigid cold …
And other moments of seeing people’s expressions of awe about our record-breaking storm:
… photographs of snow-playing dogs, the donning of snowshoes or skis, neighbors gladly helping one another, the sharing of information about current conditions, a giggle of delight upon walking out into the blizzard …
Through this, I had to consider my own reactions:
… eagerly cross-country skiing on day one;
enjoying a new novel on day two;
worrying about spoiled food on day three, but still romping outside to follow deer tracks;
and - late in the storm after four days of being housebound and without running water, electricity, Internet – feeling claustrophobic as if I were inside a snow globe; longing for the ease and privilege of being back “on the grid” (something I’ve tended to criticize as a concept, but deeply appreciate and rely on as an everyday convenience); searching in vain for a way to spin these few odd moments of discontent back into glorious strands of joy
Within myself I could feel the contradictions:
… the bliss and the annoyance, the welcome respite from responsibilities and the irrational angst about it becoming an endless condition, the beauty and the incapacity, the embrace of something unusual and the fear of it …
Our personal tolerance for changed conditions, particularly seemingly-hampering ones, varies – from person to person, and day to day within ourselves.
I have endeavored - especially over the past decade - to cultivate a sense of gratitude for a moment, to hug it unencumbered by conditions of “like or dislike,” to find the grace in a situation. But unless I greet each moment as new and fresh, my tendency – in prolonged situations of change (like day four of the storm) – will be to weary of the practice of gratitude.
For it is a practice, gratitude. And it is just a blip in routine, the transient storm.
So I am reminded that I need to continue my workouts of gratitude that I might become more resilient, more flexible, strengthened and emboldened to face the gift squarely in the face:
this is the day I get,
the moment I have,
the gift of opportunity I can take to see the novelty – and to fall into it with awe, surrender, a smile on my lips.
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2019 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."