Spring is a magnificent time of year, and I never knew just how beautiful it can be until I left southern California, where summer is endless, and lived on a farm where the seasons are ever changing.
"That it will never come again is what makes life sweet," wrote Emily Dickinson, and she's right. Life without death is just day after day of temperature controlled, florescent lit rooms with no windows. It's comfortable and sterile, and there's no meaning, no joy in it.
And what does joy look like? Feel like? Let me share with you a glimpse of spring on a 40 year old farm.
On this farm, my senses awakened for the first time to the vividness of the world and I wondered what we were doing to ourselves, locking ourselves away from this beauty? Is it because we're afraid of death? Why else would we blind ourselves to life? And here, death is a part of everything, the key ingredient to humus, tilth, life.
So when I saw that I had a choice, a choice between a life full of comforts and certainty (though soon it became apparent to me those are only illusions) and a life of seasons - the slow fade of fall, the silent cold of winter, the effervescence of spring, the fruiting of summer (and that this is reality), I knew in my heart what choice I've already made.
As spring comes again this year I rejoice in that choice, made in consciousness from free will.