The Necessity Of The Other

I've lived in a cold climate all of my life. For several months every year, I participate in the annual rite of complaining about the deep cold, the snow, ice, and wind chills. Minnesota has some of the coldest temps in the nation, and while there are many who enjoy the pleasures of skiing or ice-fishing, I'm more inclined to patiently await the start of Spring and the warm, humid days that start in June and stretch on until, what...August?

Last winter I was in northern Minnesota to present to a conference of leaders. They offered to put me up in a nice home on the shore of Lake Superior where I could enjoy a wood burning fire, and have a calm cabin facing the menacingly cold winds, and arctic ice of the lake. It wasn't terribly pleasant, and though the view of the lake was spectacular, it was also too cold to actually enjoy any more than a few short minutes. 

It wasn't too many months later that the lake ice was gone and the warm winds of summer blew through the cedar and aspen trees. The same spot I had stayed was now a place of leisure and luxury, the view indulgent, the fire place unnecessary. It was if these were two different worlds, the cold one and the warm one, both at the same address, but only the experience of the place had changed.

The climate of business and work is much the same. It seems we forget, a kind of temporary amnesia, that seasons exist not only in nature but in the cycles of business, and in our life. We experience these emergent things, like a bad economy, job loss, loss of health or wellness, even the demise of a relationship, as a surprise, as if life shouldn't have these seasons, things shouldn't be that cold and frozen?

The reality is, what we see in nature is a lesson in life. It is the necessity of the other; the morning is spectacular because the night is cold and dark, the Spring is incredible because the Winter is so harsh, the new job makes us happy because we are needed again, and the demise of something we love reminds us of what is most important. Whenever we experience the down side, we would do well to remind ourselves that this is the necessary condition of life, it is an indication not that all things are bad, but that the other is alive and well.

Not everything in life will regress to the mean, nor will joy always follow sadness, but  this season always follows that one. The older I get the more I recognize that the things that irritate me, that make my feet cold, my head hurt, my heart broken, are the things of balance and the seasons that live within me. If I could stop to reflect for a few moments in the midst of the windchill, the snowstorm, or the never ending deluge of rain, I might find an assurance in knowing that tomorrow will be new. So when things are bad enough, I can figure the direction of the wind will eventually change. Maybe the sun will burn through the gray gauze that's covering the sky today, and all those things that I trip over and curse for lack of rhyme or reason, will just serve to remind me that these things, these shitty moments are just flow, and nothing more, or nothing less than the necessary other.