Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot, we'll be together whatever the weather, whether we like it or not

Spring is here! Sound a cheer! Raise your hands! You can feel it in your glands!

After an incredibly long winter that stormed in with a record snowfall and lingered weeks after it had worn out the last of its welcome, the good guys have won at last. The snow is gone, the t-shirts are out, and it feels great to have my bare arms exposed to the air. As I was walking down to the street to get some lunch, my elbow lightly scraped a tree. The feeling of the bark on my skin made me feel so alive and so happy. It’s been months since I’ve been able to wear short sleeves outside. My skin was hiding away from the cold. Now I’m free again.

The climate here is known for being highly seasonal. There can never be any doubt about which season you’re experiencing. The winter is cold and oppressive. The summer is hot and wet. Fall is cool and colorful. And spring brings life back to the earth with astonishing speed. Already, the trees outside my apartment are in full bloom, shedding white petals into the grass and drinking up the sunlight of the longer days. Flashes of pink and yellow are like electric neon shocks in the scenery. The colors of blooming bushes are more than eye-catching. They stop traffic. People stop to talk about the end of winter or the beginning of spring.

I love metaphors and symbols and I’m always searching for them. For my first winter—my first real winter, in a place where it actually gets cold and dead, it was important to draw something out of the experience. What does it mean to experience this long period of inactivity, lifelessness, and featurelessness? Why is it necessary and how does it affect how we look at the world? The expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat once said “Every single line means something”. Well, every little component of our world tells us something about what kind of world we live in.

For me, the first thing I think of when I think of the differences between winter and the other seasons is the way it makes the outside world so uniform. After a snowfall, everywhere you go the ground is stark white. Trees that once bore wildly different kinds of leaves and flowers are now plain brown twins. Visibility is low. Go up to a high place and see how far you can see. The fog of winter keeps you from seeing very much. Below the horizon, all is white. Above, all is gray. Even the sun seems weak, like its powerful yellow rays just can’t shine like they used to. It’s a monochrome world.

The rest of the year, each individual plant can really show you who it is. The rest of the year, sunsets are multi-colored and vivid. There is a raw beauty to the starkness of winter, but it’s only in the other seasons that the scenery seems to be breathing with life. It’s not just the people who feel liberated by the changing of the season and the return of warm weather. Look outside and we can see our feelings mirrored by every little life-form, stretching out and moving freely, and wearing their best colors. Come spring, everything is in flux.

And I think, what this does, is it brings excitement. I mean, I’m excited just because a tree scraped my arm. What does that tell you?

Damn near everything is a feedback loop. For example: Let’s say you think you should exercise more. You never exercise, you’re completely sedentary. At first, it’s very difficult to get started. You’re not used to getting sweaty and exerting yourself for a while. Your habits are a powerful pull on you, discouraging you from changing anything. Your muscles protest. You struggle with yourself emotionally, finding it difficult to keep motivated. It seems a lot easier just to quit.
Then, after a few weeks, something strange happens. Things begin to change. The fruits of your labor become obvious. You aren’t as tired anymore. You feel better. You’re getting stronger and more fit. Your body has adjusted to your new routine.

After a few more months, you’ve completely switched feedback loops. Now, if anything, it would be hard to STOP exercising. If you skip a day, you’ll miss it. You won’t feel as good, missing that high for the day. Whereas a few months ago, everything was pulling you back, trying to keep you from getting active, now everything is pushing you to continue, or even increase your load. You’re fully in your new loop. Every bit of exercise pushes another button that increases your motivation to continue.

This basic pattern is true for a huge variety of human behavior. Something just has to provide that spark that allows change, and soon enough the change becomes self-reinforcing.

That’s where spring comes in. The winter is oppressive. It does everything it can to keep people inside. It sucks the color from the landscape and tries to make everything feel bleak. It wants to get you down, and it’s no wonder so many people suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and become depressed each winter. All it takes, in many cases, to cure people of their symptoms? A sunlamp.

The sun and the warmth are such easy and wonderful rewards. You go outside, and you feel good. It’s as simple as that. For the last four months, especially January and February, I often felt like hiding away in the apartment. I wasn’t depressed, but I just did not want to go outside, not even on the weekends. I went out anyway, knowing that if I didn’t, I WOULD probably get depressed, but it wasn’t made easy by the weather, which offered pretty stiff resistance.

Suddenly, though, things have changed. Now, going outside is its own reward. And I couldn’t be more excited about it.

See ya'll next time.

Randy