With the first great snow of the year comes the first chilly wave of realization that yet another year is approaching its end. It is no surprise to anyone that one encounters this inevitable conclusion with accelerating frequency as one ages. Again and again, another year flies by, the unstoppable clock ticking away in full view, making its spectator harrowingly aware of their temporary nature. Such experience, that of coming to terms with finality, can be (and perhaps should be) thoroughly defining for some. Whether that feeling of slipping time, of escalating eschatology, of impending endtime, is mere trickery of perception or neurobiologically explainable, it matters not to the deeper human dread it can permeate. A dread that tends to neither be some irrational fear or entirely consume one’s soul — rather, it trails underneath the skin, creeping in the backstage one’s mind theater. Softly, subtly, it reminds its host from time to time about the Absolute Truth. One so great and mighty and ominous that it may smother all other truths, bringing into question the necessity of having any others to begin with. What is the point of starting a fire when it is only a matter of time until the snow swallows it whole?
And yet, I love snow. Oh, how it beckons wonder. Messy, cold and disparate it is as it dances away on the whims of the breezes. Its brush blesses all it touches, kissing the edges of the world with holy porcelain, discriminating not between the natural and the artificial. Snow claims it all into its domain, shaping and molding to the rhythm of a grand symphony, swaying to the hum of the universe’s melody and the beating harmony of the Earth. Within this orchestrated storm, every flake twirls in a unique path interwoven in synchrony with its brethren, becoming part of something greater — creating something beautiful.
Once the sun comes out in the morning, it washes this small, white dream away. Monuments of ice melt and turn to shadows of what they once were: twisted, scattered, watery remnants of their once statistically impossible existence — exhaustively erased. Perhaps, if no one was fortunate enough to bear witness to them, not even their memory remains. Wordlessly, they returned from whence they came. As briefly as this song arrived, it took its leave. Its rampage that once appeared omnipotent and neverending has long ceased to be, the blaring silence clearly audible due only to juxtaposition. How cruel, but also how pretty, that it too must come to an end.
Notwithstanding, its ending could never rescind the beauty it once held, and holds now whilst gone. In the end, unbeknownst to any, it remains victorious — for it once was. Why, it was allowed to be; if that is not the purest beauty there could be, regardless of path, regardless of birth, regardless of death, what else is there?
It was, therefore, beautiful.
Even at its grittiest and darkest, even when the snow seizes life and swallows the light, it does so with an undeniable grace. This need not demerit the tragedy it may entail, but one must recognize that the cold that threatens to overtake is, too, part of the beauty: beauty that may not always be comprehensible, yet it persists as a constant in all matters and scales.
After all, how is a blizzard to be understood by any one individual snowflake? Pirouetting away in the indomitable gusts, it intimately constructs something it could never begin to perceive the full picture of. Why, that is precisely what we are: flakes. You and I are naught but snowflakes coursing through this storm. Holding the hand of fate, we carve our own path in this angelic painting. And we shall melt someday: Our palaces of ice we so intricately erected are to be dissolved into nothingness and not even memories shall withstand the sunlight.
And yet we snow.
Is that not simply beautiful?
We know it all will turn to dust. Keenly aware, reminded day to day, year to year, with every storm and every nightmare and every memory devoured by entropy. Every welcome looms an inevitable farewell — every good morning implies its well-deserved good night. And yet we do, and yet we care, and yet we push onward.
And yet we love.
And yet we dance.
Such is not an act of delusion, but the greatest service to the human symphony, to the miracle of being. To permit the human spirit to emerge supreme against the absurdity of temporality, embracing not an avoidance but a full recognition of the Absolute Truth — a truth that is neither sad nor makes it all meaningless, but all the contrary.
Disregarded and taken for granted, the maelstrom of existence is repeatedly misinterpreted as a simple fact or, at worst, a curse. It fades into the background until threatened by a dread that warns of the eventual end, but this dread is misguided as well. You need not fear that which always has been and always will be.
All one needs to do is to stop and breathe, watch the freezing, quantum waltz unfold above our heads, and take in the beauty of it all.
Carlos A. Basurto is a sophomore at Notre Dame ready to delve into his philosophy major with the hopes of adding the burden of a Computer Science major on top of that. When not busy you can find him consuming yet another 3+ hour-long analysis video of a show he has yet to watch or masochistically completing every achievement from a variety of video games. Now, with the power to channel his least insane ideas, feel free to talk about them via email at cbasurto@nd.edu.
