Monday, February 17, 2014

Snow Day Meditations & Ruminations

Written and submitted by Mr. Barry Johnston
2-17-2014  12:50 pm

Snow Day Meditations & Ruminations
Winter is harsh, but so is summer.
Winter is quiet, but summer is loud.
The abrasion of the shovel on the agglomerated firmament the only sound save for the sound of the wind sweeping sinuously around the obstacles arrayed in its path by the trees, alone protrude on one’s awareness.  In summer the sounds of the birds suppress and mask these solitary sounds, providing distraction from one’s meditative thoughts.  Even though it is commonly thought that snow degrades sounds, you can hear two plow truck drivers talking half a gridiron away indicating that the lack of distracting tumult arises from the lack of sources not the absorption of the snow.
The ablutions of the snow day foster a meditative opportunity in the stillness and silence of the experience.
The pathway to thought reached many forks and options for considering the experiences of the day.  Clearing the access to one’s abode arises from juvenile activities fostered during when snow days were celebrate, not dreaded, for the increasing the days before summer’s respite in May.  Greeting the harsh and bitter day as one proceeded from home to home fulfilling the responsibility engendered by parental promises to their elders that lived in town.
The fortunity, through personal interaction with the meteorological phenomena of winter, to discern that harsh is relative, 40 degrees is cold to someone who has not felt -20 degrees for a few months, while earning resources to support one’s personal aspiration, minor though they be, creating the impetus for the exercise .
Is the chance becoming rarer due to the emigration of one’s elders to warmer climes or to communal residential structures where the need to have a local youngster clear your sidewalk is taken care of by professionals with no need of scores of middle and high school aged students to complete the process?
Removed from the occasion to live through winters might; are we creating a generation lacking in the full appreciation of the opening winter gives us to access and pursue the mental gymnastics of creativity when we have little choice.  After completing exercise and collecting the fruits of our labor, we returned home to an environment lacking engaging options.  The evasion of boredom drives a person to create distractions and employ in the creative processes finding something to do to fill the time between completing the ablutions of the snow day to the retirement for the night.
Today young persons have a plethora of distraction, some good some not so good, to fill their time  So much so that they do not see the chance to enjoy the interactions and lessons gleaned from facing the harshness of winter.
This consigns us to hope that the saying change and thing staying the same is true this time too.




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