Seasons

I don’t love winter. It’s certainly my least favourite season. While I grew up in a relatively cold place with an unpleasant winter, I wouldn’t say I’m better adapted to it than anyone else. I do, however, have an appreciation for the seasons and I try to (begrudgingly) enjoy winter just as much as summer.

New York City doesn’t have a particularly harsh winter, it’s relatively short and seeing as NYC is subtropical, below freezing temperatures are rare. This is especially true recently, with global warming making winters warmer and shorter.

If we think of the seasons as part of an annual cycle that looks something like a sine wave from a distance, oscillating between cool and warm, then winter is the low point and summer is the high point. The thing about the high point is that everything is relative, and the low point is just as important for us to appreciate the high point.

The seasons are a great metaphor for a lot of things in life, and I tend to apply this to various things. It’s fairly simple: we can’t appreciate the highs without the lows, and even though we dislike and avoid the lows, there’s a certain value in them mainly for the experience and the contrast they provide.

To use an example, let’s consider food: if you only ever ate the best, dined at the finest restaurants, and never had a bad meal, you would soon become accustomed to such luxuries and they would quickly lose their value. As such, if you make an effort to eat simple, basic meals (ideal with whole foods) and occasionally have a bad meal, you will appreciate the good meals more. You won’t need to spend as much on fancier restaurants to get the same high. And when you do splurge, on say, a Michelin star restaurant, you’ll appreciate it that much more.

With that line of thinking, next time you find yourself at a low point, just remember that it does usually get better. Winter doesn’t last forever, even when it feels awfully long, cold, and dark. If you can make it past the winter solstice, you’re already beginning to come out the other side as the days begin to grow longer and brighter.