As part of Mindful March, I’m trying to be more cognizant of the beauty around me. As winter holds on despite its ferocity (I think it’s making up for last year), I’m trying to find beauty in it. I enjoy winter; I enjoy snow. I don’t like driving in it or shoveling it, but I’d miss it if I lived in a place without it. That being said, I’m done. I want spring, especially since it teased us briefly just a week ago (before the current piles and mounds of snow).

There is beauty in the season (sometimes you have to really look deep—like really deep):

1. The pattern of frost. There’s something fairy-like and delicately lovely in the etching of frost on surfaces.
2. Freshly fallen snow. That layer of fresh, plush white is indisputably beautiful, disguising all blemishes. It makes me want to lie in it or embrace it. And it sparkles under the sun as if countless diamonds stud it.
3. The beginnings of buds. Sometime in the deepest of winter, trees set buds in preparation for what’s to come. It’s a promise of spring, of warmth once again.
4. White mountains. Mountains are the most striking in the fall and winter. In the former, they turn red and orange, in the latter they become majestic white thrones, mountains out of a fairytale that are perpetually enrobed in snow.
5. The starkness. It may seem odd to find beauty in the stark, emptiness of winter. All things enclosed by the heaviness of life and heat are suddenly freed, untethered. There’s something light about winter, unhindered by ties and bounds.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s untapped beauty in winter. Once you get beyond the cold (and numb toes), there’s a certain charm in the season. I love the season normally, especially in December when snow and Christmas go hand in hand to create magic. After January…not so much. But maybe it’s not so bad.

Certainly, seeing the beauty even in the ugly or the lovely in the unloveable eases the burden of anxiety and depression. It changes your attitude, and sometimes that is all you need in which to lift yourself out of the doldrums…

…And Choose Joy.

—A