As a result of a monster blizzard NYC came to a standstill. The beauty of nature with her extreme powers and surreal manifestation. All I hear is complaining: limited transportation, stranded cars, streets remain unplowed for two days, residents imprisoned by snow, unable to go to work.
I enjoyed by imprisonment, I indulged in this unplanned doing-nothingness, not feeling burdened by this forced standstill. I walked on the snow with the neighbors’ kids, we played snowball fight and made snow angels. I was the only adult out there without a shovel, plainly enjoying the snow. In places where it remained untouched it lay in these splendid smooth waves carved by the intricate power of wind. The blizzard seemed to turn everything into a chaos but as the winds settled there was this white perfection glistening in the bright light of the day sun.
Frustration. We don’t like when our routine gets disrupted. We are the planners and the executors, and we have no room for chance. We can always find someone to blame for any inconvenience: government, global warming, bad luck. We dismiss natural phenomena as interruptions, focusing all the attention on overcoming the unforeseen obstacles: "how do I get to work with all this snow?" is a task at hand. Only children are happy, they get to stamp and “swim” in all this whiteness, cover themselves with snow from head to toes and be blissfully glad it hasn’t started melting yet.
Standstill. Full stop. Pause. A chance to take a real look at your life when you are forced to stop running. What do you have? What are you? What’s left when job, projects, commute, shopping are all halted? Playing freeze tag with time, trying on idleness, running out of thoughts and feeling imprisoned by the chased-after freedom just because it showed its face for a change.
No comments:
Post a Comment