The things we miss when we assume we know what we’re going to see. We don’t bother seeing at all.
The world is simpler in the snow. The focus is basic needs such as warmth and food. We play. We simplify it further by considering the snow to be a trap. We can’t do the things we want to do. Work and social engagements are more difficult to reach. Maybe we make it more complicated than it is. Everything we need is already where we are, and it’s hard to know what’s in front of us until we slow down.
When it snows, everything becomes the same white. Well, except that there are trees and sky too, so really everything is white, brown and blue. Except for the shades of grey in the shadows on the snow which make the snow not solid white, but a spectrum from black to white. So the snow is shades of grey with brown and blue, except for the hidden rainbows in the snow. Every snowflake is a facet like a tiny prism splitting the light as it reflects off the granular surface of individually piled snowflakes. It’s like Seurat painted snow in my back yard.
Hence little poem that no one understood because ostensibly it described too many colors for white snow:
Untouched pearlescent sea
harboring tranquility
shadows stretch in fingers grey
magic iridescent day
Beauty doesn’t shout. Beauty will contentedly go unnoticed. Finding our stillness inside of us lets us hear Beauty’s whisper in the world. The snow was a blessing in disguise that gave us time to do the thing we wanted to do all along. Slow down and enjoy the beauty around us, and each other.
