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181 " More than any other season, winter requires a kind of metronome that ticks away its darkest beats, giving us a melody to follow into spring. The year will move on no matter what, but by paying attention to it, feeling its beat, and noticing the moments of transition—perhaps even taking time to think about what we want from the next phase in the year—we can get the measure of it. "
― Katherine May , Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
182 " Everybody winters at one time or another; some winter over and over again. Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. "
183 " But my prayers—earthwise as they are—take me to a place that I am unable to dissect or scrutinise, a space beyond words. "
184 " I didn’t feel that the two should be in conflict—achieving your potential and not being completely miserable. Happiness is the greatest skill we’ll ever learn. "
185 " Happiness is our potential, the product of a mind that’s allowed to think as it needs to, that has enough of what it requires, that is free of the terrible weight of bullying and humiliation. "
186 " That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife. "
187 " 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. "
188 " It’s a peculiar thing, to lose the note where everyone tends to begin, but there it was. From then on, my scales started with an A, or even a few notes below. We would do run-ups to my C. I could find it if I thought of it as a long jump. Sometimes you need to take a few steps back and start somewhere else. "
189 " When everything is broken, everything is also up for grabs. That’s the gift of winter: it’s irresistible. Change will happen in its wake, whether we like it or not. We can come out of it wearing a different coat. "
190 " I still retain a little of that attitude towards the snow. Try as I might, I can’t produce the adult hardness towards a snowfall, full of resentment at the inconvenience. I love the inconvenience the same way that I sneakingly love a bad cold: the irresistible disruption to mundane life, forcing you to stop for a while and step outside your normal habits. "
191 " This, then, is how I turned my year: not in a single high-stakes moment, but in a series of gestures that gently acknowledge the change taking place but which have an eye on the continuities too. "
192 " In our winter, a transformation happened. We read and worked and problem-solved and found new solutions. We changed our focus away from pushing through with normal life and towards making a new one. When everything is broken, everything is also up for grabs. That’s the gift of winter: it’s irresistible. Change will happen in its wake, whether we like it or not. We can come out of it wearing a different coat. "
193 " The orderly universe of the hospital helps us to form our own abscission zone, that hardening off of an old life, ready to shed its duties and expectations. "
194 " Here is another truth about wintering: you’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. And in return, it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us. It’s an exchange of gifts in which nobody loses out. "
195 " Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season when the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. "
196 " That’s what the natural world does—it carries on surviving. Sometimes it flourishes, lays on fat, garlands itself in leaves, makes abundant honey; and sometimes it pares back to the very basics of existence in order to keep living. "
197 " Winter is a quiet house in lamplight, a spin in the garden to see bright stars on a clear night. "
198 " There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them into somewhere else. "
199 " [In November] as soon as the sun goes down, I start thinking about bed. "
200 " Winter is a season that invites me to rest well, and feel restored, when I am allowed to retreat to be quietly separate. "