Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Snow Day

Unlike some people I know, I have never much disliked snow! Undoubtedly that derives from having grown up in a city where we walked everywhere or took public transit, and so were not frightened or endangered so much by snow. So I appreciate the ease with which things close here and the city sort of comes to a quiet halt when it snows. There were lots of closings and cancellations, which, when you think about it, is probably as it is meant to be. In earlier eras, people automatically slowed down during winter. Even wars would stop for winter, as so many meetings and events had to today. People used to understand that nature intended winter to be a slow time and behaved accordingly. And since they were behaving in harmony with nature, their behavior in this respect was more humane than our arrogant attempt at business-as-usual. So the problem is really not so much winter as our peculiar and arrogant modern insistence on being hyper-active even in a season when we are meant to slow down. But however modern we may be, however hyper-active we want to be, nature will always have the upper hand and will always be able to foil our determination to dominate the world and our insatiable (and inhumane) lust for activity at all costs.

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