I remember my first Spring in Northern California.

It was after I moved to the United States from South East Asia all those years ago.

Spring in Nature

There were a bunch of drizzly days and then out of the blue I spied tiny buds in the bushes and trees. They showed themselves as I peered out of our apartment window. At first, I thought it was a trick of the eye, but as the days turned into weeks, the blooms showed themselves all at once.

Now, what is striking about this yearly occurrence, is that it arrives after the trees are barren, almost dead-looking for months.

Winter Before Spring

The winter grey and cold. Somber even. The other stunning fact is that the emergence of buds and blooms occurs after a period of hibernation.

This latter point is key to my thoughts.

The metaphorical winter (“Winter”) includes Covid-19 and the devastation it wrought in stages, in different parts of the world. This deadly virus raced around the world ravaging many communities.

But Covid-19 was only one feature of the Winter that was 2020. You see, I see this point in history as, metaphorically speaking, a changing of seasons. I have become convinced that we cannot see that Spring and new life as arriving when we are in the depths of Winter. We need to seek change.

Spiritual and Moral Lack

I feel like the Winter, for me at least, was the culmination of a number of spiritually difficult years prior to 2020. There may have been economic gain but there was a spiritual and moral sickness building up around me over a number of years. I personally felt like I had been holding my breath for years, while rushing around in a dizzying frenzy, faint with exhaustion. We had lost our ability to understand and accept; see Acceptance, Respect and Understanding.

There was also, much ado about nothing. I felt that all that activity was in exchange for a moral emptiness, because we, as societies, had ceased to examine our behaviors and morals, our sense of right and wrong, of kindness and cruelty. To me it was also a lot of years when I had paused on my real, moral soul journey as Captain of My Soul.

Then, 2020 arrived. And suddenly, we, as a society and citizens of the planet, were confronted with a kind of critical point. The pressure was for change and soul-searching. We were forced to look at ourselves in the mirror. And we might have been shocked by the image before us. What we saw might not have been pretty. There were some parts that could have been downright ugly. Were we the hypocrites we saw reflected back at us? Was this really what we had become?

Soul-Searching

To me, 2020 seemed to require of us a re-examination of all of our values and priorities. We had two choices at that point. Face the prospect of doing some real soul-searching, while acknowledging that we might have been led astray, wrongly distracted even. Or we might have vehemently denied that anything was wrong. Perhaps we chose to blame others for everything that was going on, taking little or no responsibility for our moral choices or judgments. Maybe we went on the offensive taking out our frustrations and disappointments on others.

Whatever course we took in 2020, there were consequences for us and others /. We may have come out from the phase of despair and darkness, hesitantly hopeful. Or we still feel desperately dark right now. The point is that we really need to be honest with ourselves in our soul journeys. Ultimately, accepting immoral, unkind and despicable behavior in ourselves or others, weighs us down. We feel a melancholy weight in our hearts. We don’t have to admit our feelings to anyone, but we do have to be honest with ourselves.

Spring Emerges

The fact remains that we only emerge from the Winter when we have admitted to ourselves at least, that we have made moral mistakes or mistakenly endorsed the dark behaviors of others, not realizing the intent behind them. This is how we deal with the internal turbulence.

You see, this much is true. Springtime emerges just as one is worn out with the cold, dark days, when melancholic thoughts are replaced with hope blooming anew. Thus, we can at this critical point in time take the right, moral path of light. This is something that we can do for ourselves. And then, we can look forward to Springtime.

“Springtime emerges just as one is worn out with the cold, dark days, when melancholic thoughts are replaced with hope blooming anew.”

Sue

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