Grey Skies and the Colours of the Rainbow

When I left home this morning, grey skies embraced me. The dim light tinted grey the whole world before my eyes. It wasn't much of a surprise. It's winter and a rather harsh one although these days the temperatures are only around freezing point here in Graz. However, at this time of year the palette of colours is always reduced to shades of muted brown, green and grey. The sun is already strong enough to melt away the shining white of snow, but it's still too weak to revive the grass, spring flowers, bushes, shrubs and deciduous trees.

The grey weighs on my soul, makes it slow and tired. Many here are suffering from winter depression, but I never went through one in all my life despite the lack of light, warmth and air that come over us every year without exception. I feel like floating in the greyish-pink bubble of my life, always at risk to fall from my cosy, though alarmingly thin-skinned and vulnerable nest that is surrounded by a world scattered with rough edges and countless stings. The grey of the skies makes me aware of the fact that in the forty-two years on this planet I haven't seen an awful lot of hardships yet. What does life still have in store for me? Good things? Bad things?

Whatever! Life is change. The seasons of the year show us that everything in the world exists in a cycle of beginning and end, of birth and death, of decay and resurrection. Nothing ever gets lost. The matter of a dead leaf will become a part of something else, maybe of a green blade of grass, maybe of a yellow petal of a primrose, maybe of a red sprout of a tree. It doesn't matter. Transformed as it will be, it'll still belong to our universe. It'll be part of our lives and it'll add its share to the colours of the world during another season or during the ages to come.

How much I long for spring to come and to bring back the colours of the rainbow!