Stock Photo
It’s February. The winter stretches ahead like an endless white hell, swallowing all, endlessly hungry, devouring all – hope, joy, sunshine, life. Endless. There is no escape.
Padre (Major) Howard Rittenhouse – File Photo
……
Wow. That was dark. Where did that come from? Maybe I need to have a break, or a coffee, or a Snickers. Well, if you identified even a little with the above, welcome to the Cold Lake and northern Alberta winter! It can certainly seem endless, especially if it’s February and you don’t have a holiday planned for somewhere warmer.
It’s tempting to look ahead to spring and summer, and longer days, those big Alberta skies, endlessly blue under which we enjoy all those great things: camping, swimming, gardening, backyard fires, lazing around on the deck with a beverage. (Sorry if this is depressing you – it is me, a little)
But if we spend all of our time looking ahead, looking forward to something else, we’re in danger of missing what’s right there in front of us.
In the summer (sorry for the reminder of warmer weather) of 2016, we took the boys to northern France to tour Vimy Ridge, Ypres and the battlefields of WWI, Dieppe, Caen, and nearby sites. It was a memorable vacation (sorry). After touring around Ypres (very sobering), we struck out for Dieppe. Driving along the Norman roads, I suddenly saw a sign: “Azincourt.” No, it can’t be! I thought. And then I saw another sign, “Battlefield of Azincourt, next left” (of course, it said this en francaise, but I knew what it meant). My wife was startled when I hung a left turn without warning, the only explanation a single explosive word: “Agincourt!” Eventually, she and the boys understood that I’d seen something of interest and they were mere passengers subject to my whims of direction and attention.
A couple of hours later, we’d toured the very good museum, and seen several videos that gave us excellent background and information on the battle. Oh, didn’t I say? Agincourt was a battle fought between the English under Henry V (“We few, we happy few. We band of brothers” – that battle, that Henry) and the flower of the French nobility on 25 Oct, 1415. Henry – and his Welsh longbowmen – won decisively.
To this day, thanks to those videos and their repetitive drumbeat of “Agincourt, 1415,” my sons only need to hear 1415 to respond in Pavlovian fashion, “Agincourt!”
It was a serendipitous side trip, but more than worth it.
That’s what I mean by keeping your eyes open for what’s right in front of you. If you’re constantly looking ahead to something theoretically better (or at least less crappy than now), you may miss something truly wonderful, unexpected (that’s what serendipitous means BTW), and amazing. But if your eyes are glued to tomorrow or next week, if you have tunnel vision, if you just have your head down and just need to get through today, tomorrow, this week, you may just miss something, well, awesome.
I don’t like winter any more than you do. I look forward to being able to putter around in my garden, and sit on the deck reading a book listening to Rush and sipping a beverage…. Sorry. I got distracted there for a bit. See? It’s very easy to do!
Well, don’t do it! Keep your eyes on today; look forward to tomorrow certainly, but don’t become blinkered and blind to what’s right in front of you. It just might be something … wonderful.