February Blues

It’s early February and the grounds here at the Hermitage are looking rather tired, to say nothing of the soggy fields and woodland that surround us. It is all, to be frank, a bit grim. The days are mostly overcast. It’s cold. The ground is saturated with water and in many places swimming underneath it. The trees are shivering in the wind, while the blackened leaves from last year decompose at their roots. Grey. Grim. Wet. If nature here was any more tired it would be tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle.

But it is, of course, on the cusp of change. It’s early February, and next month’s March. And, if I remember correctly, April will follow that. And March and April mean Spring. Daffodils, Crocuses, blossom and buds.  So, going on past experience, we know that Spring is, at this very moment, jumping up and down and rubbing its chilly hands together in the changing room, warming itself up for a full-scale pitch invasion.

If, however, this February happened to be our very first, and we looked outside on this dour weekday morning, we wouldn’t have a clue. We wouldn’t know the significance of the odd green Bluebell shoot popping its tip through the moss and leaf mold like a little periscope checking whether or not it’s safe to come out. And so, experiencing only greyness, wetness and moldiness, we might get a bit depressed.

But this isn’t our first: we’re all hardened February veterans, and so that’s all irrelevant. Isn’t it? Well, not really.

Because even though we know that the wonders of Spring are imminent, and that there have been one or two Springs before, and that February is always a bit tired and grim, we still all too easily lose perspective. We forget, and when we forget it’s as though it has always been like this. It’s amazing how when the human mind is presented with an experience it often fails to remember that there have been others. Spring? Summer? Autumn? Don’t know anything about those! The coldness and greyness of the experience drown out the memories and knowledge of other seasons and our mood sinks with the garden bench in the waterlogged field. A depressing February morning forever. And ever. And ever.

Which brings us to our moods and feelings. Without wisdom and understanding these transient states of mind swallow us up whole and spit out all perspective. We forget that we ever felt another way. A happy mood is a cloudless midsummer day that has always been, and always will be. A bout of excitement is a brisk and bright April morning that will trumpet good news forever more. A spell of contentment is the heady August evening that will swirl and sway with the golden fields of corn to kingdom come. And depression, or despair, or anxiety – these are the eternal hours of oppressive dark, dank, coldness that eat into our bones in early February. Happiness and excitement, fear and despair: we relate to them all as real and lasting, as desirable or detestable, and so we suffer.

The trick, then, is to know the transient and ephemeral nature of these experiences – not before they arise, or after they’ve tootled off (though that’s better than nothing) – but as they are present. Here. Now. This mood will pass. And it will be replaced by another. It’s like the changing of the seasons, only on hyper fast-forward and in no particular order. Spring. Autumn. Summer. Spring. Winter. Winter…

Knowing this – not simply intellectually, but as a living, intuitive awareness that is tuned into the transient nature of things – we are able to let these moods and emotions be. We don’t grasp onto them or feed them; we don’t push them or pull them; we don’t embrace or resist, or hide or fight. We simply let them be, and let them go. They are no more our personal possessions than this miserable February morning.