I made the piece above back in 2012, and it always reminds me of Spring. It's titled “Slow Explosion,” and that's what Spring feels like to me: a slow explosion of new projects, new collaborations, new life. A chorus of leaves unfurling, people reconnecting, ideas coming into form.
Although it's not quite Spring yet (it's actually snowing outside my window as I write this!) last week my mom told me the daffodils had come up along the driveway at my parents' house, and the forsythia was blooming. This is the only forecast I've ever needed to tell me that Spring is just around the corner: the emergence of those tiny yellow blooms in the midst of a grey landscape.
February is a strange month. Every year it feels like a waiting game, prickling with restlessness. I woke up this morning with a phrase in my head: The Month of Doubt. That is so often the energy of February. Our ancestors would have felt this as their Winter stores dwindled and they wondered if Spring, full of sustenance, would arrive in time. Many of of us still feel a pang of doubt this time of year. When Winter seems to go on forever, we find ourselves asking: “Will Spring ever come?”
The next thing that came into my mind this morning was an idea: that hope and doubt are the same force, moving in opposite directions. Both are acts of imagination. Hope is the imagination engaged in service of a better future, and doubt in service of a darker one. If reframing doubt is that simple, really just a matter of changing trains to go North instead of South, then this season seems to be asking me to use my great wild powerful imagination toward hope, toward positive change, toward the wonder of what's possible.
What can I do over the next several weeks to welcome the slow explosion of Spring? How can I build a container big and strong and flexible enough for all that abundance?
With so much hope for a glorious Spring,
XOXO,
Molly
