A Hibernation of the Mind

Reflection #19

A drizzly, cold, miserable day greeted me and the dismalness penetrated both the world outside and the world inside.

My mood feels inexorably linked to my environment. Perhaps that is not unusual. Are we humans so shallow that the sun shines within us simply because the sun shines outside? Winter is not my time. Some people enjoy winter, I hear, with its hot toddies, crisp air on clear days, and cold cozy days of bundling up and staying inside.

Though I try to embrace those things, spring and summer hold exalted places in my heart as my favorite times of year, and I would be happy without winter and its short days. My mind and my moods become barren and hibernate, just like the animals and the earth herself.

Everything becomes more difficult. Ideas and creativity stagnate. Even writing this reflection feels like a chore. My fingers move of their own accord, circling around an idea that evaporates anew as each sentence is typed. On a summer day, this reflection would find a theme, but on a winter day, today, the theme is that sometimes one simply can't find the theme. Perhaps there is wisdom in this somehow.

Winter, for me, forces a hibernation of the mind. A slowing down, not necessarily for reflection, but simply to do less. To think less. To create white space. Design needs white space. Typography needs white space. Ideas need white space. Everything beautiful needs space and time to percolate. For it is not wise to pack one's days so full that there is no time left to think, to ruminate, or to chew on ideas.

And perhaps this cycle of seasons, from sunshine & life to darkness & hibernation over the course of one trip around the sun serves a similar purpose over a longer circadian rhythm. Perhaps winter is the white space of the year; that time when things move slower, a season when we take off for holidays, and, like me today, we find ourselves uninspired when that penetrating dark reaches out to touch you inside and seep into your bones. A forced white space when the grey drizzle blocks the sunshine in your mind.

And like sleeping regenerates your mind and body daily, winter may serve as the sleep of your year, and a time when ideas and actions aren't being taken with the easy step of summer, but are buried, percolating, while somewhere deep, your mind is hard at work, taking advantage of this white space of the year to eliminate the bad ideas, and subtly germinate the seeds of new ones, and while the fruit of this work won't sprout until spring and and won’t flower until summer, perhaps still, those thoughts are there, even now, forming, unbeknownst to the conscious mind and, if so, perhaps a miserable day like today is not a bad thing.

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