Spring is in the air as we ready ourselves for flowing floral dresses, knee high pants and our favourite pair of strapless sandals. Soon, the trees will start to blossom as they do each year and swarms of bees, chirping birds and sunny rays will bring our gardens exploding back to life. But it wasn’t always like this. Not a week ago we still experienced the last lashes of a delayed winter and one would have been hard tasked to pinpoint exactly when summer said it’s goodbyes. Three months into winter and we can hardly imagine what it felt like to walk outside without a jacket or leggings. People complain about the cold and the stuffy noses and miserable moods that winter brings, forgetting that without winter there could never be sunshine, for along with all the ailments, weight gain and apparent moodiness, Winter brings us the gift of spring – or rather the appreciation of it.

There is a lesson that winter brings

We prepare for winter by stocking up on jackets, scarves and woolly hats and bid it farewell by discarding them. In life too, we continuously discard and replenish as we wade through our personal seasons. And it is personal, as each of us experience change in a different way. Change is scary for all of us no matter whether it be good or bad, in fact there is no bad change only a negative perception of something unknown – change therefore, is relative. To illustrate this point, one could look at a rose bush and be sad that it has thorns, or be happy that the thorns have roses. The trick is to ready yourself always for an approaching winter, knowing that everything is fleeting and that if good exists then so too there must exist the opposite in order to restore balance. Manic depressive sufferers struggle to see the rays that their Spring brings, because they refuse to look outside the window. So there they stay, stuck inside the circumstances they have created around themselves. Most of the time those circumstances are related to financial stress and the instant they come into some money, they feel empowered once more – until the next winter hits. In the summer months we don’t sell our jackets and winter wear, because we know that the season will change and we will need them again. The same outlook should be adopted when we look at our personal lives.

It is not about the money

The greatest lesson winter teaches us is that we need to learn to let go of our routines and hold onto change. Let go of the things and people in our lives that keep us locked up inside, unable to experience the joy of Spring, the freedom of change. Learn to take chances, dance in the rain, phone your loved ones, kiss your children as often as you can, roll on the grass, walk to the store, if you like green apples, buy red ones, ride a bike to work, smell the pages of a book, switch off your phone, turn on the radio and play it loudly – smile. Forget about the confines that social media and corporate marketing forced around you. Surround yourself with good people instead of good things, because in the end it is the things you own that end up owning you. Wear your heart on your sleeve, you never know, somewhere there might be someone who needs to see it. In all things never forget that winter will come, and it will pass, but when it comes be prepared with memories that warm more than just your hands.