Recently I read that the daylight grows longer at its quickest pace during this time of the year. When the workday is done, that’s usually the time and space where I make my meditation. It’s the moment when the sky just starts turning dark, and in the living room the sun determines how the remaining light looks – the sun, the sky, the clouds, the atmosphere – they all conspire to bring about something gray and dull and somber, or something filled with rich hues and deep color.
I don’t usually think of winter in such colorful ways. In my mind, I’ve relegated it to the stuff of dreams, and most of my dreams are in black and white. Yes, my dreams are drained of color – a rather unfair predicament for someone so enamored of bold splashes of fuchsia, gorgeous gushes of chartreuse in early spring, or the fiery red of this candle.
Even on the gray days, the light outside the window will often turn blue when seen in pictures. In person, it’s never quite as striking. Another instance of disappointment, of something that feels unfair, when really it’s just another lesson of winter, another way to shift one’s views. Finding beauty in more subtle nuances is a way to finding happiness, but it takes practice and focus and a willingness to live in the quiet, without the relentless distractions and bells and whistles of cel phones and lap tops and surround sound and screens that get bigger and bigger. I’m running on now like my sentences, running through winter and keeping a steady pace to get through, to keep going.
