Half full or half empty day

Captured Leaves or ...... ?

I’m debating whether to describe this day as “half full” or “half empty”.  You know what I mean?  The optimist looks at a glass filled halfway with water and calls in “half full”.  The pessimist looks at the same glass and labels it “half empty”.

So here’s the February scenario for you.  Gray heavy clouds sink down from the skies, drizzling dampness on everything.  Sodden.  Gray.  Ominous.  It feels like you’re moving in a dismal ashen world.  A shivering clammy dank humidity surrounds and penetrates everything and everyone.  The driveway has turned to deep slush and mud.  Everything is soaked, bleak, saturated. (Doesn’t this sound like describing the glass as “half empty”?)

Let’s try again to describe the day as “half full”.  The vaporous mist blankets the forest, its silvery beauty rising up against the oyster skies.  The moistness of the drizzling pearly mid-winter melting etches the world in lovely filmy artistry and allurement.  Everywhere shades of gray rise against the bare bone landscape of tree branches.  Three fat mourning doves appear magically beneath the spruce tree, pecking amongst the spruce cones.

Which scenario is the “truth”?  Gray dull moody world or lovely drizzling shades of silver?

To tell you the truth, most of the day I labeled it all just gray and heavy.  But somewhere in the afternoon while we were filling the wood room, my inner view shifted.  And suddenly it all looked so beautiful.  Interesting how a simple shift of perspective can change everything.  I sure felt better as my awareness changed. 

I recommend giving this a try whenever labeling the weather as undesirable.  Go outside and look around for the beauty.  Or, better yet, just intensely look around, instead of allowing the thoughts to label indiscriminately.  Beauty is bound to show herself. 

You may be wondering why we needed to fill the wood room again.  We really didn’t.  Except this melt was the perfect time to re-stock our supply.  If we wait for another week or two, a foot or two of snow may cover up our dwindling pile.  We spent at least 45 minutes hefting the split logs from one set of arms to another, and then stacking on top the pile in the wood room.

It feels a good accomplishment to finish that chore this afternoon.

Speaking of weather, I’m actually starting to hope for colder weather.  Yes, you heard that right.  Mostly for the sake of the ice fishermen.  You see, my brother-in-law is arriving in early March for his first-ever ice fishing spree out on the Big Lake.  We need to have good thick ice for him.  We really do.  Although I might selfishly pine for warmth, the fellows need deep ice.  So….that’s my weather order.  A couple weeks of colder weather, eh?

It's a gray, gray (silver!) world