Day 71: 新年快乐, or The Coming Spring

I’ll begin with an update as I have not posted anything since last Saturday. I have worked on my Family Meeting Handbook most days this week and I hope to publish it in some format next month. 

I am also working on other, longer term projects and musings during my writing time, which I am extremely excited about but not yet ready to share. 

This week, the weather has whipsawed between extremes of heat and cold, clear blue skies, rain, and even blizzard-level snow. The temperature has fluctuated from 11 degrees to 60, and back again, in the past six days. 

Last Saturday, 7 inches of snow fell.

Then, day after day, the snow that came down so abundantly, white and pure, was gradually shoveled, compacted, melted and moved around as we all struggled to make our ways through it. Eventually, it turned slushy and gray, and finally melted in the rain on a wet but unseasonably warm 60-degree day. 

Watching and wading through these changes on my daily walks, I tried to view them as a lesson on impermanence. We rush so quickly to judge every event and happening around us, and now (due to our ability get news and information from all around the world), all around the world. 

But, as quickly as we form attachments and opinions about things—stimulae/response—they change. Someone who complained about the snow last week might fear they would never see snow again when it was 60 degrees in February. Someone bemoaning how climate change could cause a 60-degree day in winter experienced biting wind chills again this weekend, a reminder that nothing stays the same. 

Also this week, with the observance of Lunar New Year by more than one quarter of the world’s population, I am embracing the spirit of the holiday. Lunar New Year happens halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. The holiday occurs in winter, on a long, cold night when one cannot see the moon, and acknowledges the fears and challenges of this dark and troubled time, but it also looks forward to the coming of spring, which will happen, just as it has each and every year.  

Climate change is happening, but as this therapist who specializes in climate change reminds us, there will still be good days. In our lifetimes—even in our children’s lifetimes—there will still be good days. 

The global pandemic continues, and we are now nearing two years since we were all sent home. The US death rate remains extremely high, with coronavirus killing roughly 2,500 people each day this past week and more than 900,000 people total.

At the same time, a feeling of the tension and anxiety easing belies this reality, with transmission rates dropping just as precipitously as they rose with Omicron and people resuming some of their pre-Omicron, post-pandemic ways: indoor playdates with optional masks; indoor dining, with proof of vaccine. 

We callously remind ourselves deaths are a lagging indicator, and we gingerly hope for the coming of spring. 

Covid will likely bring more variants, more challenges and a continued need for adaptation, which feels so difficult for us as creatures of habit, judgment and attachment. 

We foolishly believe what we feel in this moment matters, instead of treating our feelings like the clouds in the sky these past days, knowing, whether they bring rain, or clear the way for abundant sunshine, this too shall pass, and letting them float on by.