It Will Not Always Be This Way

We are in Deep Winter. The snow is swirling everywhere; the giant snow blower in the sky is set on "High" and the snow pours down in sheets, twirling left and right, up and down, in curls and diagonals, relentless. I am about halfway through Howard Bloom's book, The God Problem, in which he's explicating deep patterns in math and the universe, but happily minus the actual math equations, which is a relief. I'm concurrently listening to Josh Schrei's podcast, The Emerald, which is talking about deep patterns in mythology and spirituality. The Bloom book is currently talking about Hegel's idea of the dialectic, which basically says an idea (thesis) creates its opposite (antithesis) and the conflict between the two produces a new idea (synthesis). Naturally, my brain wants to make some kind of synthesis between the deep patterns in cosmology and those in spirituality, even though I'm not sure if either of these concepts in any sense "creates" the other, but we'll leave that for now.

Looking out at the swirly snow, it's easy to feel that this will never end, that winter will go on forever, that the past and future of warm days and nights is just a fantasy. But the deep lesson of nature whispered by the trees is that it will not always be this way. Hidden in the frosty earth is the future of spring, silent and buried, but there. Many trees and plants can't get to spring without winter. Some plants need to freeze to germinate, and winter makes trees conserve energy they'll need to bloom and fruit in spring. Talk about thesis/antithesis! The universe swirls like the snow, planets, stars, particles colliding, creating, extinguishing. Even cells in our own bodies, being destroyed, being created as we grow and shrink and change. It will not always be this way. Whatever good thing or bad thing you're going through, it will move and change because that is the deep pattern of the universe. I know this is just a re-stating of the Persian phrase, "This too shall pass," but somehow "it will not always be this way" seems softer and kinder, more applicable to particles and shapes and motion. If winter is the thesis that creates its antithesis, spring, then maybe the synthesis is: it will not always be this way. Looking out at the snow, I find this comforting. Here's to the hidden spring and the wisdom of things that swirl and change and grow.