My fellow Geneseo students (or at least those who read The Lamron), I honestly think it's about time we stopped complaining about the weather.
I know, I know, complaining is kind of our thing. And understandably so; it's cold here, it's windy and every second we're forced to be outside, battling our way through the arctic tundra known as our campus just so we can spend an hour shivering through a lecture on trigonometry as another little piece of our soul dies of hypothermia.
I get it. Really. And believe me when I say that my still-thawing toes and I agree whole-heartedly with your displeasure. I can't help but wonder, though if maybe we're all a little harsh on Mother Nature. She is, after all, a mother, and like all mothers, she often does things that seem incomprehensible to us lesser beings.
Take last week for instance. Most of us were pretty upset when mother dearest dangled that comparatively spring-worthy warm day over our heads only to send us careening back into an icy pit of frozen horror the next time we stepped outside. It was cruel; we screamed. Nay, it was downright hurtful. And I suppose that on the surface, it was a bit unkind to play with our fragile emotions like that.
Yet that's only one very limited perspective on the matter. Instead of spamming each other's Facebook news feeds with moans about the sudden unwanted return to the Ice Age, try thinking about what such an experience could teach us. What lesson is Mother Nature hoping to impart upon her wayward youths (which, in this case, I guess, would be us)?
Perhaps because I'm an English major, I like to think of the whole event symbolically. The weather, in so many ways, is like life. Both of them are unexpected and both of them will disappoint you. In fact, just like the weather last week, I imagine life after college is just one string of painful, bleak hours broken by the rare oasis of hope, which will only serve to reinforce the true misery of our daily lives. Also, like with the weather, life is much easier to deal with if you throw things (snow or otherwise) at your roommates.
See? Reasoning through it makes everything seem better (I think).
So, Geneseo, I pose you this challenge: For once, why not listen to your Mother.