Spring Awakening

Ah Spring….when a young man’s fancy turns to… Wait a minute. That was written well before women enjoyed equal rights…and you don’t necessarily have to be ‘young’ either. So as the temperatures climb, I detect spring fever in the air. OK—perhaps it was my own temperature I was taking. I KNOW I’m not alone. I see you quivering in your boots out there. I have your number, people!! I promise, however, I will not name names.

Spring is a time of growth; a time of renewal; a time of new beginnings. As the season changes, it’s another marker of time going by; of moving on. So while we’re all watching our personal mercury rise, some of us are using this time to evaluate our situations. We clean out our own closets literally and figuratively.

As the flowers are sprouting out of the earth we are taking our heads out of the sand. It seems this is the perfect time to take stock and perhaps make some changes…or not. We find ourselves acting both as armchair psychologist and wounded puppy to our friends. We watch, we hear, we analyze, we see—I mean that not in the literal sense, but in the intuitive. We ask ourselves questions we’ve probably asked ourselves all year, but somehow they seem more urgent in the warmth of the sun and among the multicolored blooms. I have actually heard adults utter the words: “do you think he/she likes me??” Seriously. You need petals to play “he loves me; he loves me not, so now is the time, folks.

Sometimes in the midst of trying to make sense of it and gaining clarity and truth, we ask both why and why not? There is a point at which we need to make decisions about what we want and where we’re going, and what and whom are important to us and vice versa--and so we come to a crossroads. We all probably know the answers to a good deal of these, the issue is do we want to accept what those answers are? What happens if we get an answer we may not want to see or hear, and do we have the courage to even want to face that and take action?

We weigh those highs and lows. We delve into our feelings and emotions. Sometimes we like what we see; sometimes we don’t; sometimes we’re not sure what we see. But in the end, those decisions need to be made with full understanding of what is real. Fantasies are wonderful and even necessary in many ways. I’m not talking about dreams—you can make them come true as life situations or achievements change, or even by making a courageous decision--fantasy is different. But when all is said and done, we have to live with what is actually reality. Whatever we think or imagine, what is truly real will be the thing that ultimately, we have to deal with. The actual significant moments in life are made of that—otherwise, ultimately, it’s really just a façade--an empty shell.

We analyze and sometimes obsess. It can be an uplifting or painful process. Sometimes life seems so complicated, but it’s so often a matter of many entangled things that combine to make something that, in the end, is just so simple. In the midst of the straight, calm road, though, you go through incredible highs and painful lows. That’s the ride. Maybe that’s why amusement parks are so popular this time of year.