Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 300

 

 

Here are a couple of excerpts from a book I recently read, "Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times," by Katherine May.

A snow day is a wild day, a spontaneous holiday when all the tables are turned. This one had a bit of the spirit of Halloween and a little of Christmas. It was wild and cosy at the same time; rebellious and heartwarming. Here was yet another liminal space, a crossing point between the mundane and the magical. Winter, it seems, is full of them: fleeting invitations to step out of the ordinary. Snow may be beautiful, but it is also a very adept con artist. It offers us a whole new world, but just as we buy into it, it’s whisked away.

If only life were so stable, happy, and predictable as to produce ants instead of grasshoppers, year in, year out. The truth is that we all have ant years and grasshopper years—years in which we are able to prepare and save and years where we need a little extra help. Our true flaw lies not in failing to store up enough resources to cope with the grasshopper years, but in believing that each grasshopper year is an anomaly, visited only on us, due to our unique human failings.