Hope is like winter

Every season makes me think of emotions, for me the most powerful season is winter. In this small town of mine the wind blows storms over the ocean and mountains to grab hold and shake the buildings and the trees. Rain and hail fall in gentle or violent rhythms beating against the roof of my home or pelleting cold against my skin. The sky is gray and dreary and the howling of the wind is scary. You might wonder why I think of such a season as hope. It is a valid question.

Hope is the woman who sings a Venda song as she passes my desk, the echo of her summer tropical home in the warmth of her voice. In the distance I hear the sounds of a Zulu man speaking over the phone and I can see the hills and plains of his home in my mind. In the street I see an older woman holding on to an umbrella that caved in under the wind. A young man dashes across the street with a plastic bag covering his head. It is wet and cold, and the wind is strong and has done great damage already. The worst of this storm must still come. Already the notices are full of roads blocked and washed away, homes devastated and people asking for help.

None of this sounds like much of hope, right? Wrong, I see an old truck parked in a street with homemade sandbags being unloaded at a house where a young pregnant woman stands grateful to the stranger helping her shore up her home. I see a young schoolboy holding open the taxi door while helping the old lady fold her umbrella as the driver waves her money away. A car stops and the young man shakes the plastic bag before he jumps in to get a lift from someone. I have several messages asking "are you guys, ok? Do you need something? Do you need help?".

Winter is when I see people at their best. I see a man with a lot of firewood drop some off at a house where I know an old man lives... his wife passed just a few months ago. It may be cold and wet, and the wind may blow as hard as it can, but the spirit of my people shines in times of storms. It is where hands grab a stranger when they slip on the wet sidewalk, random firewood that someone drops at your house. A lift because people notice your need. It is the simple kind gestures of people to each other in the cold months of winter that tells the story of a people. I see hope. Kindness, compassion, giving without expecting, warmth. This is the elegance of humans, the thing that makes us worthy of each other and ourselves. It is not money, or politics, or religion, it is not division or difference, equity or opportunity, it is simply doing because we are all in the same storm and we anchor our humanity down with the simple acts we do that keeps us human, makes us human and in that lies the hope for me.

In summer we rush we get on with things, careless, free I suppose but not truly aware of how driftless we are. Like balloons in warm air we rise up each on their own lost in our own success and achievement, but when winter comes we huddle together, suddenly your money cannot buy you warmth, you're might cannot anchor your home, your strength is diminished and if you do not stand together you will be blown away, your house collapsed, your foundations swept away by the waters of a strong winter storm. It is the time when we as humans are truly human. If only we could retain this humanity during the rest of the seasons surely there would be no poverty, no criminality, no war, not suffering. Perhaps if we could just remember to be winter in our every season, we might find a summer that fulfills the promise of what we could truly be.

Humans are so good at looking at what makes each different and unique, how we may dominate or climb the ladder, reach the top and never look back. We live for summer days. Yet we are alive in winter storms. Wish I could bottle winter and pour hope over our world. Just imagine what we could be if we just for a moment reached not for the stars but down to grab the hand of the person below you and pull them up to stand with you, beside you, together. What a world we would be and what could we not achieve?

Stay winter, be hope,

A