Trudging through Late Winter

 This time of year in the northeast is a tough one- the seemingly never-ending trudge through cold days and colder days and the 'my, isn't this a warm spring day!' to more cold and colder days.  The kind of days that make you want to give up waiting, or hoping, or even caring for brighter, sunnier days ahead.
     And you might just.  You might just give up- give up waiting, give up hoping, give up caring.  Whether it's giving up the belief that spring will never arrive (even though we know it will); giving up hope that some people will never change (even though they will in their own timeline); giving up caring because what's the point anyway (even though our whole essence as human beings is to care).
     But what happens when we do just give up?  What are we giving up exactly?  When you're tried everything you can think of, be it through analysis, trial by fire, careful planning, determination, force, manipulation, mock resignation, feigned indifference; when you've waited, you've hoped, you've cared for as long as you could have; when you've literally exhausted all possible options and there is absolutely nothing left - what is left? When you let go of what you thought would be, what should be, what could be, and you just give yourself up to what is, what is there? 
     Exactly that. You give yourself up to what is.  What has been lying dormant for so long suddenly begins to sprout, ever so tiny and delicate, barely even noticeable underneath the if only then's and the they should's and the why can't it/ she/ he/ they just be's.  What is there is life itself, in its barest, most exposed, most vulnerable form, like an overturned earthworm, that wants nothing more than to experience living, and all that that entails- the simple desire to move, to grow and to experience. Before it is deemed good or bad, happy or sad, a blessing or a burden, life just is.
     When we do give up (or rather, give ourselves wholly to life, rather than to our thoughts about how life should be), we can begin to see all that there actually is: the earth longing to open after a cold winter; the heart longing to love again after a painful loss; the white pale legs longing to don a pair of shorts no matter the freezing temperature.  Life, in all its forms, longs for you to live it- not to think about it, or to judge it, or to wait for brighter, sunnier days, but to truly live in it, in every single moment of every single day (even the cold ones).