Week 6 - Adrift - Andrew Stefani

Adrift

    To borrow the words of a man of thinking disposition, nature reflects our mood back at us. To the melancholic misanthrope, storm clouds looming on the horizon are a bad omen, a sign of danger and bitterness to come. To he who meditates on his own thoughts, the thoughts themselves are the omen. Just as winter can be cold and summer can be warm, so too can winter be warm and summer cold. While I stood, barraged by winter winds, on the dock outstretched into drifting waters, I was warm. My hands were cold but my heart was ablaze, stoked by the breath of good company.

    Cold can stand on its own, yet warmth must be accompanied by cold. Why is this? Yes, perhaps it is as simple as good composition, but perhaps there is a connection to be drawn. Happiness must always be overshadowed by doubt; all beauty must die, only to be reborn again. It is a simple feeling: the feeling of slight disconnect that ravages relationships, the feeling that births a void of doubt between complete connection and fear of loss, fear of being misplaced, fear of not belonging. I embrace the cold. When the cold barges into my little world, I laugh at it and call it life.

    We embrace the cold, so that when it tears through our lives it may be familiar. We imagine our little bodies adrift on a lake of cerulean hue, cold lapping against our pupils, and dream of a fire, burning like the sun, buried in the heart of a blizzard. What is the meaning, we ask, why am I here, we ask, why, why, why, we ask. Swim to shore, I answer! Balance in all things. Let the cold and warmth mingle together. In each there is value. In the cold, we escape overbearing warmth, and in the warmth we escape the cataclysmic cold. Life is better with a bit of temperature, lest we be adrift in a void of inexperience.