everyday can be a snow day

on the mindsets and perceptions which shape our reality

Peanuts

The night before a big snow storm was an anxious waiting game growing up. As the evening news played, the names of various schools, districts, churches, and other organizations scrolled the bottom of the screen one by one indicating whether or not they'd be closed or delayed the following morning due to weather. I’d sit on the carpet at the base of the television, eyes glued to the lower third of the screen with my eyes speedily scanning for my school's name as the text flew by. The cancellations were organized alphabetically by counties, so I painstakingly waited till the bitter end when my school’s county, Waukesha County, would finally appear. And if I got the result I'd spend the last hour crossing my fingers and toes for, the following day would be a snow day.

The feeling of a snow day isn't comparable to any other emotion, in fact I use the snow day as an example when trying to capture other sensations carrying its same blissful je ne sais quoi. It's more than just not having to go to school, it's the scenic backdrop of freshly fallen snow coating every outdoor surface and flakes still trickling down coloring the landscape in bright white, its being woken up by the unparalleled glow of the sun reflecting off the white snow, it's the unhurried breakfast, its seeing what comes on the tv when you're usually at school, its putting on snow pants and boots to mold and fling snow around the park, and the crowds of kids riding sleds down the big hill. This sense of ease and fun, with an edge of discovery was tangibly felt. Life was easygoing, free in every sense of what free could mean to a 10 year old.

But as temperatures drop and the hustle and bustle of life continues after delays and cancellations cease, the once plush and pristine landscape turns dense and grows soiled. Patches of ice turn roads into major accident zones, and sidewalks into hazards. Bruised tailbones from unfortunate tumbles, brown slush covering interstate lanes, and slowly disintegrating snowmen all steal from the wonder and freedom that once came with the snow day.

Suddenly that once blissful feeling turns into a burden—scraping ice from the windshield daily, canceling plans, shoveling sidewalks, and suffering below freezing temperatures steals the joy. Sometimes the snow days would last almost a whole week, where by the end, you’d actually want to go back to school as the cost of missing time with friends and doing fun activities at school grew with each passing day.

Sweet things easily sour this way, and as I get older the realization that the difference between love and hate isn't as big of a gap as I once believed. They’re two sides of the very same spectrum separated by a gray area of varying thickness. 

This past week I experienced the first big snowfall that I’d been around for in years. After years of not really having to deal with the fallout of snowstorms, seeing 11 inches of snow piled up outside of my window brought me total joy. I felt like a kid again on snow days, itching to jump in pillowy mounds and draw snow angels. I watched as it fell, amazed at nature and what a force these tiny flakes were in the process of creating. My mindset toward Wisconsin and the brutal weather it sometimes provides has shifted completely simply because I shifted where I placed my passion, now in love and admiration rather than hate and disdain. 

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It’s confusing navigating the landscape of love and hate. There is a constant ebb between grace and condemnation which can feel dark and unstable, leaving us unsure of where our morals stand and coloring our outlooks.

The opening song on Kanye West’s 2018 album ‘Ye’ is a track called “I Thought About Killing You Today”. In this song he recites a spoken word exploring the shadow side of the ego with the repeating refrain, 

“The most beautiful thoughts are always beside the darkest”. 

This morbid, introspective intro drives home this idea of love and hate living within the same boundaries and how passion can display itself in both beautiful and dark ways depending on what we choose.

The root of both love and hate is care, and that sense of care can manifest in different ways. What Ye highlights in this song is the duality of humanity. I see the phrase “the most beautiful thoughts are always beside the darkest” as a testament to the laws of balance in our world and the inherent paradox in all things. We are led to believe that two distinct camps exist, the good guys and bad guys, good outcomes and bad ones, but the capacity to do both harm and good exists in all of us and our perceptions of situations shape our reality. The power to shift reality lies in the way we allow our sense of care to manifest.

While we’re talking about dark thoughts, the Barbie movie illustrates a similar point. When Barbie's perfect world becomes corrupted by death anxiety and bad hair days, she and Ken travel to the real world so see what’s up. While there, Ken learns about the patriarchy, a system which he decides to bring back to Barbie Land and it shifts their society entirely to the point where all the Barbies lose sense of their once stable identities. Barbie on the other hand learns that there is peace to be found in imperfection, and deprograms the brainwashed barbies by showing them the impossible paradoxes of the system of patriarchy puts them in but instead empowering them to choose themselves rather than living to please men.

Life is constantly contradicting itself, there is noise coming from all sides which at times feels impossible to discern between, but we have a choice in which noise we choose to let govern our lives.

The reality for the person who chooses to rejoice on a snow day and the person who chooses to lament are vastly different despite the circumstance remaining unchanged.

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In the Bible Jesus used mud to heal the blind man. This miracle represents the sheer power of God, but also the humble beginnings of the world and God’s ability to use what is bad or barren for good. The story goes God used dust to form man when he created the world, and into the molded forms he breathed life. From nothing, came, well everything. We come from a lowly place, from the dust of the Earth, but look at what it was able to create. A world where ice falls from the sky, and magma erupts from the core all on the same sphere. Unimaginable things were born from the lowest of places, proving beauty can be found anywhere. It’s a mindset thing, it's carrying a certain perspective where burden can be turned to joy, hate turned to love, and mud can become life. Where everyday can be a snow day.