The Heart of Winter

by Jonathan Evison

Time did not march on methodically, minute by minute, day by day; it sprinted away from us in mad bursts, a thief in flight.

It was not even Christmas, and yet already it seemed the heart of winter was upon them.

Life was a relentless war of attrition, to love was torturous, for love ravaged you and brought you to your knees; it broke your will, over and over, until death seemed like a merciful conclusion.

To be needed, after all, was a blessing; to be central to the lives of others was an honor and a responsibility. To love and protect those she held dear had been a principal theme in her life. But was it enough to endure the suffering that lay ahead? At what point did survival become a law of diminishing returns?

What made life truly precious could not be measured by achievement, or even service. To live fully was not an obligation or an act of faith, it wasn’t a state of being at all, but a capacity, a willingness to engage the smallest and most unexpected aspects of being alive, to remain curious and open to the unforeseen and hitherto unrecognizable.

To live fully was to recognize and acknowledge the tiniest of beauties, those ever-present, immutable though often elusive truths, pure and simple as a raindrop on a daisy.

“Real poetry is to live a beautiful life,”

* A marriage is not built in a day to last. Rather, it is shaped gradually and methodically to withstand the ruinous effects of time and outside forces beyond the control of its principal players. Like all institutions, a marriage requires maintaining, and amending, for it is more than a binding commitment, it is a process, one that demands participation, a willingness to absorb, to accept, to reassess.

a life by default.

That people think of us when we’re not around, that they go out of their way to do little things simply because they hope to please us, we sometimes take for granted. They may not always be matters of great inconvenience, these small acts of consideration, but they add up to a great deal.

He came to realize that it wasn’t always necessary to voice an opinion at all. Nobody had to be right or have the last word. Sometimes you just let a subject exist without trying to own it. You listened instead of talking, you considered instead of deflecting, you looked for common ground instead of points of contention. Sometimes playing well with others was as simple as getting out of your own way.