Winter skies are seductive. Walking out to my morning porch to retrieve the newspaper allows for a deep breath of cold air and an eyeful of the rising sun. Haze-less morning skies with dancing ions on a humidity-less canvas create a blue screen effect. The rising sun casts its ropelike beams of light-saber red and honeycomb amber across a waking neighborhood until it finally climbs over the horizon with a gush of orange and light.
Then, about nine hours later, that same dance repeats in reverse as the diving sun takes a bow, trailing a teasing skirt of orange with dangling red and yellow ribbons into the closing curtain of darkness. The final wink is almost audible as the warmth slips below the neighborhood trees.
The shorter days of winter open the possibility to easily witness both sunset and sunrise and so fully spark the soul to take each in with a deep breath of north-wind-chilled air. It's invigorating.
Those shorter days can also be anxiety-provoking.
We all feel that tinge of loss during the dark months. It's as if the introduction of January signals a death in the family, a loss much more serious than just the end of the college football season, holiday parties, or the body-enriching fall temperatures. January and February agitate the mind with the desire to do more, but we often fail under the weight of listless bodies. Seasonal Affective Disorder seems too sanitary a description of what's really going on, too clinical in describing fully why our souls ache.
A few years ago, a travel company took an interesting approach to describing the most depressing day of the year by creating a tongue-in-cheek algorithm in which variables such as weather, time elapsed since the holidays, and incoming Christmas bills were pulled together. Its determination was that the third Monday of January resounded in sadness. Of course, the best way to fix that was to plan a trip. Preferably, with their company. Genius is best when humorous and innocently offensive at the same time.
In real life, families don't need an algorithm to determine the reality of the dark months, as it often seems that those days are the most trying. If a family has a built-in barometer--a teenager--then the mood of the home rises and falls with each passing cloud.
Teenagers are moody anyway. But take a kid in a transitory stage who also might be more susceptible to the lowest swings of his personality pendulum and throw in two months of dark days. Add the distance between holiday highs and spring break fun. Include a healthy dose of responsibilities and school work. For some, depression and anxiety become real.
That fact is nothing new. But it's become more complex.
Certainly, there's a difference between chemical imbalances or a history of depression as opposed to seasonal blues. But for the latter, the best remedy for us all, no matter the age, lies in the figurative aspects of the shorter days. Continuing one's orbit regardless of the wobbles of life leads to the rosier parts of experience.
Winter provides an illustrative backdrop to the deeper meanings we seek. It's a whistle-necklaced coach pleading for his team to dig deep and come from behind. It's a seasoned teacher handing back a failed exam, only to pause and offer a pat on the back. It's the somber days of Lent before the resurrection of Easter occurs. Sometimes, darkness provides the impetus to our greatest moments. Never give up. Never give in. Where there is even the smallest light, there is hope.
I once had an English teacher who demanded that when describing a sunrise or a sunset, his students must use their most royal language. Again and again, he'd pound away with pleadings to use ultra-descriptive terms, flowery language, and purple prose. Push it far, string together descriptors like train cars of originality. Hence, the first two paragraphs of this column. Nobody says "light-saber red" with a straight face. I'd get a punch in the arm if I described the sunset as a closing act in front of my high school friends, and the thought of their discomfort made me chuckle as I typed those paragraphs. But, as I typed, I went to that porch again and again. I smelled the crispness and inhaled the sting of cold and felt the gathering light.
Use your most royal language, the English teacher said. Don't give in to the urge to describe a sunrise or sunset as your eyes see it or your mood sees it or your weather-beaten heart sees it. Describe it as your soul sees it. Because when you are able to put colorful terms to voice and are able to fully describe something as natural yet stunning as a sunrise, you have begun the best therapy known to man. You've become in touch with your soul.
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Steve Straessle, whose column appears every other Saturday, is the principal of Little Rock Catholic High School for Boys. You can reach him at sstraessle@lrchs.org.
Editorial on 02/24/2018