Holding a heart

McKenna Snow
MSMU Class of 2023

(2/2023) It’s February, and the major winter holidays are over. Maybe they were great, maybe they were hard. For many, leaving behind the Thanksgiving-through-New Year’s holiday range is a relief. For others, however, the warm glow of the Christmas lights was a security amidst the cold bitter weather. Whatever way that one may feel about the end of the holidays, there is quite a prevalent question that looms with the grey skies and chilly sunsets: what’s next?

Often the tendency, at least in my own experience, is to immediately start looking forward to spring, to Easter, and to warm, sunny days. The rest of winter suddenly seems like a waste of time, and I’d prefer to get it over with in order to move on to "the good days" of spring and summer.

Given that this is my least favorite season, this month’s prompt was especially challenging. But, even though that is the case, I am glad to say that I have learned a lot in how to appreciate winter for all it has to offer.

Several ways regarding the value of winter have become quite apparent to me in college. This first way may come as a surprise to some, but something I’ve come to love about winter is the ability to experience the cold. Now, I am speaking as a resident of states with four seasons, so maybe this point will not be so poignant if the News-Journal has any readers in Alaska or Greenland. But, for all those living in similar conditions as me, I have found this aspect of winter especially comforting: for one-fourth of the year, you have the opportunity to be cold, and to learn from that experience. By this point, I don’t mean that everyone should leave their coats at home this winter—certainly not. Living on a college campus, I have to walk everywhere, so wearing warm clothing is very important. I only want to say that I have found great value in allowing my face to feel the cold as I walk to get food, and to allow my hands to be cold for a few minutes. Groundbreaking, no?

The value I see in this is, firstly, it encourages gratitude for once you get inside. How often we take for granted our heated homes and warm mugs of tea and coffee! We shy away from any and every element of discomfort through cold in the winter, and that is normal; we simply are not meant to thrive in harsh, cold conditions. But the trade off in this shying away is that we risk losing our gratitude for what and who takes us in when we seek warmth, and we risk losing an opportunity to contemplate what it means to be human. While summer gives many opportunities to connect with nature and to thrive in the warm sun, winter offers a unique and irreplaceable experience in feeling the cold on our face, on our hands, that declares something important: we are embodied beings who need each other!

I did not build the Patriot cafeteria, but it warms me up after a bitter walk from my dorm to get dinner. In that walk, I needed another human being—or many—to make such a circumstance available. Further, I do not provide the heating in my dorm for myself, someone else does. Someone else learned how to design a heating and cooling system, and the wonderful maintenance crew of the Mount keeps it running well all winter long. The same can be said about cars with heating systems, for electric kettles that boil water for tea and coffee… none of that was me, but all of those things impact me and improve my quality of life. Therefore, winter is a unique opportunity to contemplate blessings in my life, as well as the never-ending need I have for the community around me, and in some subtle way, the community’s need for me.

On top of learning to appreciate the value of being [temporarily] cold, I have also come to love the opportunities it affords me to slow down, especially after the holidays. What is the rush to springtime, anyway? I love Easter very much, but there is beauty in the seasons before it as well. Lent is a time of preparation and deepening one’s relationship with Christ to rejoice in the Easter season. How could I love and celebrate Easter as much as I do without the forty days in the desert beforehand that I spent with Jesus? Similarly, how could I love summer as much as I do without knowing what it is like to live without warmth for several months? Perhaps it seems like an exaggeration—couldn’t a month of cold do the same? I don’t think so. We would still find a way to take summer for granted if we only had winter for a month. A holistic view of the seasons invites us to appreciate what we have in front of us for the sake of itself and its relation to everything else. That appreciation is a skill many Americans lose out on because we are too busy chasing things: the next goal, the next season because we like it better, the next holiday; real life is happening in this moment, in this cold weather.

Finally, winter makes us more intentional about loving one another and ourselves. I find it more difficult to care for myself during this time, but that just means I need to learn how to care for myself more intentionally, when the circumstances aren’t my favorite. To love is an act of the will; as such, because I must choose to become more attune to my needs and the needs of those around me, I must be more deliberate about celebrating existence and human life. Winter gives us a unique opportunity to love with intentionality, rather than with ease. We have to choose to love ourselves and those around us in the winter time, when it comes less easily and there is less "Christmas spirit" to go around, and when we are more prone to irritation. To choose to love and practice gratitude in wintertime is a beautiful way to spend the rest of these colder months.