Snow wraps the trees in ribbons, and I drink a lot of ginger tea. I spend some of my evenings reading everything from Northanger Abbey to The Great Gatsby, and sometimes the existentiality of the human condition demonstrated in these novels makes my brain feel like it might explode.
Sometimes life feels charmingly simple, and sometimes everything feels far more complicated than I care to attempt articulating. I am finding myself in new corners of campus, tucked away into my readings and assignments and discussion posts.
When I live in the mental space of feeling (almost) bored by the simplicity of life, I think of L.M. Montgomery’s beloved Anne of Green Gables:
“After all,” Anne had said to Marilla once, “I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.” –L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
I have become enchanted by the notion of “wintering” during these blustery winter days.
Captured brilliantly by Katherine May in her aptly titled book, Wintering, the conception of being intentionally invested into what the literal season around us is demanding has been very helpful for me.
Being tucked into what can feel like an isolating midwinter, I am learning to stop trying to repress the rhythm my body is begging me to fold myself into. Unfortunately, not all of us can afford the privilege of hibernation, but we can adapt to becoming more aware that the rhythms of the earth impact our bodies, too.
I enjoy tucking myself into soft knitted sweaters I find at the thrift store and cozying up with a novel at the end of the day when the sun goes to sleep (far too early, it feels sometimes). I have started to make my Quizlets in cozy spaces in Douglas Library (because nothing screams winter more than a Harry Potter library bathed in golden winter light). I like wrapping myself in a warm scarf and practicing bad poetry when I have stretches of time where I have less work to do (because hobbies do not require perfection). I’m trying to make more soup and go skating more.
George Eliot wrote that “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts,” after all. Not in what feels so luminous that you must declare it for the whole internet, but the things that are small and simple. Unhistoric.
The hours I spend typing notes and drafting papers feels very unhistoric. It doesn’t always feel like I am doing anything momentous, and that’s okay.
My evenings are very slow and soft, and maybe yours are too. Sometimes the season begs us to be slow, to cocoon inside the warmth of our homes next to warm lamps and kindred spirits and there is more than enough room for that. My life is not shiny, and I hope you don’t expect yours to be either.
A lack of striking light doesn’t mean that life is not touched with beauty and meaning. It doesn’t mean that the things I learn are unimportant, or that the monotonous tasks of laundry and grocery shopping can’t be lovely too.
It means that they are part of a pattern that can ebb goodness into the world in a strikingly humble and tender way. After all, I think this is one of the most human things ever.
Cheers,
Hannah