Seasons and Attitudes

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but I think I prefer equinoxes over solstices. At the soltices occur when the season is on the verge of becoming extremely hot or extremely cold, at the thirty sixth parallel, and nearby. Equinoxes, half way up the planet in the northern hemisphere, signal the beginning of moderate weather, moderately warm or cool, and it is either spring covering the world with the first shade of green, or autumn, preparing to dazzle us with bright hot tree colors. But the trick is, equinox or solstice, to embrace. Embrace either. Embrace both. Humans can learn to embrace anything, even suffering. A Goethe said: "one does not always lose if one has to do without". And "sickness too has its virtues. I have learned much in illness that I would have haver learned in good health". Embrace the new year! Embrace the aging process, and embrace death. In America, we tend to celebrate a birth and mourn a death. Shouldn't we do the opposite? Bertolt Brecht said "In the earthquakes to come it is to be hoped I shan't allow bitterness to quench my cigar's glow." I'm pretty sure it was January 1, 1966, when I began my diary. I wrote things in it like "I had a pretty good day today." Good, simple, positive stuff. No cynicism or sophisticated analysis. The kind of 'tude that wouldn't do any harm right about now. I think by the time February rolled around, my entries were less frequent than daily. And by March and April, the diary was idle. Oh well. Not bad for a ten year old fifth grader, in the nineteen sixties, without a kindle, I pad, or word processor.