I was terrified of a “real” winter after realizing I would be going to school in the Northeast. Coming from Texas, where the grass was always green, the bluebonnets the color of the sky and the sunshine abundant, a Massachusetts winter seemed a price to pay to attend my dream school.
Despite this, the snow is now melting, the grass will be revived, and the birds are beginning to sing again and I am still alive after the snowiest season on record here. Indeed the weather was piercing and unforgiving, making any walk to class or elsewhere a battle of survival, but this winter taught me a new appreciation.
Texas will always be my home and I credit it for my formative molding, but experiencing a brutal winter was something that Texas could not give me. The winter made me have to find the sunshine in other things in my life. Metaphorically cliché or not, I had always taken the supply of sunshine in my life in Texas for granted and could always find a little slice of happiness from going outside. Now, I walk outside and see grey skies looking over me and darkened trees enclosing me. Or at least that is how I first saw it.
A day when I was feeling overworked and exhausted like most students at Harvard feel all too often, I decided to go outside. Not to walk to the library or run to CVS for rations of food, but to just be outside. I was not sure what had taken over me, but I ended up dancing around with headphones on throughout the Yard and ended falling into a pile of snow staring at the sky. In that moment, the sky did not look so daunting and the trees not so formidable. I felt the beauty of my surroundings—the purity of its simplistic essence. The snow, the grey color schemes, and the whirling wind were no longer constricting me as I realized that this winter would never be the “winter” of 50 degrees I had back home, but that was okay. In fact, it was even better. It made me feel alive in a different way that sunlight made me. The polar opposites of the hot I was accustomed to and the cold I had now entered made me feel like I could become a more wholly adapted person. Not adapted to the weather alone, but to what all the other things I was afraid of at first or what seemed inevitable to bring me sadness or heartache. I lied in the snow finally taking the time actually feel the cold rather than just pretending I could hinder or abort it completely. I gave in a little to allow myself to truly understand, change, and learn to love where I was.
So here’s to you winter. Thank you for making me accept change, or even better to embrace it. I have learned to find the transformative abilities of new experience and indeed have found a way to find myself and find happiness within a surrounding I had preconceived notions of distaste about.
Fire and ice may not be destructive after all.