Bitching and moaning

In case you hadn’t noticed, Ontario (and Quebec, the Maritimes, and many U.S. states) have had a very snowy season this winter. Record-breaking, in fact.

We’re on the eve of March and generally by this time, people are “sick of winter” and “ready for spring”, but the additional snow seems to have intensified the bitching and complaining.

Seriously, the moaning and groaning among my friends and colleagues about winter is just getting annoying. I can understand the rightful whimpers of those who have to shovel heavy layers of snow after every storm, and there’s a small segment of the population who suffer from seasonal affective disorder (or SAD, one of the most fitting acronymns ever), but there are lots of people who don’t have such excuses and I quite honestly have little sympathy. I want to give these people a good smack and tell them, You live in Canada! We have winter every year! Get over it!!!!

When I was growing up on our family farm, we were to some degree at the mercy of the weather. Some years we had droughts, other years we had too much rain. There was nothing that could be done about it. Sometimes conditions would improve after a bad spell (e.g., rain after a long drought) and I would say to my dad, “Hey, this is good! It’s nice that the weather is getting better!” and he would respond back to me, “Well, just as long as it doesn’t rain too much or for too long, because then …” and I wanted to yell at him, It’s the weather!!! Just be happy, goddammit!!!! Why borrow trouble???? (There’s a saying that farmers are never happy and there’s a LOT of truth to that statement.)

As long as my life isn’t in imminent jeopardy, I tend to be really Zen about the weather. And truth be told, this part of the world is one of God’s fortunate places – no hurricanes, very few tornados, moderate weather, etc. There’s nothing I can do to control whether it rains or snows or is too hot or cold, so why stress about it? If there’s a drought, I enjoy the many sunny days. If it’s snowing, I revel in the beauty of the snowflakes swirling and drifting in the air and clinging to the trees. If it’s raining, its sound soothes me.

The next step in my personal development, obviously, is coming to accept that people, not just farmers, like to complain, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about that either. :)