Seasons and Emotions

How do we know when it’s spring? Clearly, there are seasons in some sense (at least in most parts of the world), but isn’t it slightly strange that we assign an arbitrary day—a strict cutoff line where one season “ends” and one season “begins”—to what is, in fact, an incredibly moderate, gradual shift of average temperatures over time? 

When does winter end and spring begin? Where does the state of being “sad” end and the state of being “happy” begin? Much like the seasons, there is neither an end nor a beginning to our emotions. We have a predilection towards giving ourselves concrete terms to make sense of the world we live in that is proliferated with these kinds of imprecise and inexact states. There is nothing inherently wrong with these mental shortcuts; I’d imagine we’d be overwhelmed if we were to constantly have to delineate each and every detail of our state of being to every single person we interacted with. 

But in the interactions that truly matter—the ones that are responsible for determining how we love one another, whether in friendship or relationship—don’t merely let the blunt tool that is our language ultimately deter us from understanding the incredible nuance in how each of us feel.