A Feeling As it Snows

Written in a room with high ceilings and large windows as it snowed.

I do believe that people like when it snows, if they do at all, because it makes them feel relevant. In fact let me amend my statement and say that I believe everyone, even if they dislike snow in the extreme, employ and enjoy this feeling of relevance. Let me explain.

Chilled white droplets fall from the sky: they remind us there is a sky. These same frozen droplets fall to the ground and accumulate there: they draw our attention to what lies beneath our feet. And what of the in betweens? The selves that extend from our feet on the ground to our heads in the air, the selves that exist between the resting place of the snow and its place of creation? These parts of ourselves feel, with varying receptions, the innumerable bits of snow: they see and feel and even smell them, in a vague sort of way. And if it’s a snow storm, the falling bits come not in a brief flurry but with sustained and thorough effort. And those who enjoy these sorts of storms will exclaim,

How beautiful it is! Ah! How very peaceful and picturesque! And they feel relevant because they have been made to feel so strongly about the snow by the conditions of Nature above their heads. Such a force made so accessible reminds them of their power to access it.

And those who dislike, with varying degrees of intensity, the occurrence of a snow storm, will mutter,

How cold it is outside! How very icy the roads will be and how terribly snowy the sidewalks! But they, too, feel relevant, because they have been made to feel strongly about the snow: such conditions have become burdens to them but to acknowledge this and even to dislike this is to exhibit a renewed understanding of an ability to be burdened, at all.

And so the snow falls outside and I, shudder in the cold, do not wonder why I feel very strongly contented.