While business coaching last week, the subject of winter came up. My client wondered what was wrong that he felt tired, unmotivated, even melancholy lately. Why couldn’t he find the forward motion of his work, or one might say, the spring in his step?
Winter is not spring. And while we live in a culture that craves eternal spring—always budding forth to something new, greater, bigger— that’s not the cycle of life. Nor the pace of the heart.
Most of us become agitated with too much silence or emptiness in our lives. We wonder why we have constant, busy, spinning thoughts—what I like to call hamster head. Yet, wouldn’t it be worse, we sense, to have no thoughts at all? Slowing down might put us in touch with our feelings, which could be completely overwhelming. Especially feelings of fear.
I once read that if we give up fear, we need never give up anything else again.
I have a dear friend who’s a musician. For years when he was starting out, he panicked in January that his business disappeared almost completely —a stark contrast from the busy holiday season. But one year, he figured it out. It’s a cycle. He may as well use the time to rest or travel or become more proficient at his craft. Life was happier with the paradigm shift.
So, what do we do in the middle of winter? Relax, trust, know that spring will come? Prepare by allowing the emptiness to teach us something deeper?
This has been a season of significant loss and letting go for many people I know. There are no platitudes for times of darkness, cold or suffering. Winter releases all. And even when we know spring will come, winter must still be experienced authentically or we risk carrying around untold baggage.
On New Year’s Day, my musician friend brought back a quote from his gig. It was up on the wall in a psychiatric hospital. It read, Have you ever loved someone so much that you would do anything for them? Yeah, well make that person yourself and treat yourself good.