Trees In Winter

After days and days of bitterly cold weather, it finally started to warm up on Saturday (I realize that words like cold are relative depending on where you live. In Arkansas, never rising above the freezing point for an extended period of time and waking up several mornings to single digit temperatures and a thick layer of frost on your car counts as bitterly cold.). Most of the day was in the 40s, and on Sunday, the temperature actually made it into the 50s. Yesterday morning I wasn’t even wearing a coat when I headed out the door for work.

We live in a large apartment complex that is split in half by a divided four-lane road that runs through the middle of it. I had just pulled out onto this road when I noticed the trees in the median. Encouraged by the 48 hours of warmer weather, they had all apparently decided it was time for spring and started to bud.

Of course, it’s only the end of January and there are still several more weeks of winter to come (in fact, weather forecasts are calling for snow later in the week), but I was struck by the optimism of the trees—suffering through weeks of frigid weather, it took only two days to convince them that a change was on the way.

Maybe what’s even more remarkable is the fact that after it freezes again, and these buds die or fall off or rot or do whatever frozen buds do, the next time it warms up a little, the trees will try it again. They never seem get discouraged when their optimism is proven false.

I’m not like that. Sure, I’m optimistic at times, but when people or circumstances let me down, as they invariably do, I get discouraged, and frustrated at myself for getting my hopes up in the first place.

I say all of that just to make this point: if people were more like trees, I think the world would be considerably better off.