Lately, I’ve been watching icicles form, grow, and melt outside my window. I find the changes dramatic. Sometimes they are fierce and jagged, and at other times delicate and beautiful. They are watchmen protecting the house, wardens locking me in, jewels glistening in the light, and mourners weeping with the thaw, drip by drop at the dismantling of their wintery presence. Are they aggressors or victims? Do they have to be either? Perhaps they are both.
The wonder isn’t why or how they change, but rather, what happens as they change. It’s the transformation, the morphing from one stage to the next that intrigues, because we, as humans, go through transitions too.
Do we melt under stress?
How do we act when winter seasons of life arrive?
Are we strengthened or do we weep?
How do changing circumstances forge new identities in us?
Time is moving, and with it, change. Our experiences are transitory, and we are influenced by our surroundings, which are inevitably beyond our control.