I live in southern Ontario, a part of Canada where the weather can be somewhat unpredictable. And since this
is Canada, it should surprise no one that this winter has been a pretty crazy one. Tons of snow, lots of storms, and unrelenting cold long after the calendar ticked over into spring.
To wit, we woke up this morning, April 6th, to a few cms of snow on the ground. After I walked our silly little pup,
Calli - she loves snow, and bounds through it with an energy that reinforces my belief in the goodness of all dogs - I came back into the house for a quick breakfast and peek at my phone before I had to head out into the real world.
I immediately regretted my choice to read my social feeds. I saw post after post in Facebook, Twitter and Instagram about how awful the weather was, how unfair it was that Mother Nature decided to make it snow on April 6th, how terribly upset they were that they had to pull on their boots and woolies. The horrors!
So I picked up my phone and jotted this, because when I'm disappointed in the human condition, I like to write. Here's what I
shared on Facebook:
Hey #LdnONT, it snowed last night. As much as I'd like to join the FFS-it's-April-6th-enough-winter-already brigade, I won't. I'll happily brush the car off, shovel the walkway and drive more slowly than usual on the office commute.
Because I, like you, got another day today. Maybe not the sunny, warm, picture-perfect day we all hoped for, but a day nonetheless. I'm not in hospital today. I'm not worrying about a loved one's - or my - next 12 hours. I can walk, talk, and write whiny posts on social media. I'm not redrawing the rest of my life based on a conversation I might have just had with someone who knows far more about medicine than I do.
I'm just cleaning my freaking car and going to a workplace where I get to do neat things with neat people. A little snow doesn't change any of it.
Happy Friday. Shabbat Shalom if you're into it.
I've been getting comments all day. Some funny, but all positive. And the word that keeps coming back to me is "perspective". Because the world needs more of it now than ever before, and not only when it comes to something as seemingly trivial as a little bit of snow this late in the season.
Your turn: Why do we care about the weather so much?
