A Snowy Sidewalk

Snow Cat (Photo credit: clickclique)

Today as I walked down the hill from campus back to my apartment, I resisted several strong urges to step off the sidewalk and tread through the snow. I was wearing the right boots for it, after all, and it just looked so inviting! I felt like a child again, like I was back in Pennsylvania during the winter my family built snow forts around the mailbox and went sledding on VA Hill and jumped off the trampoline into heaping piles of white powder.

And I guess that’s why I didn’t do it. I kept my feet directly in line (except for a couple of quick kicks to the snow because I simply couldn’t hold myself back) and I walked home on the concrete sidewalk – like an adult. I had no real reason to walk in the snow except that I wanted to. It was an absurd wish and I knew other people would look at me funny for deliberately stepping off the designated path and tromping through the snow like an eight year old.

But it got me thinking. I thought about everything we humans do while we’re living: we eat and sleep and fall in love, but we also work and build buildings and shop for new clothes and decorate Christmas trees and dress up in costumes and make music and solve math problems. Then I thought about everything animals do: there are some exceptions, but really all they mostly do is eat and sleep and mate. I guess they play sometimes too. But they don’t feel a need to DO so much. I feel like the older humanity gets, the busier we feel we have to be. And yes, a lot of the things we do have wonderful purposes, and yes, I do believe there is a reason we came to the earth. However, if you just think about it, just think about the concept of language even, the fact that we feel we must communicate with other people, when you break it down it all starts to seem absurd.

So where do we draw the line? What’s truly absurd and what’s a reasonable, necessary pursuit? Why do I feel so silly for wanting to step off the sidewalk and tromp through the snow when it’s really just as silly to sit and watch a TV program or decorate the different bedrooms of a house? Aren’t those things, too, based merely on human urges and desires?

So maybe next time I get a funny or absurd urge to do something, I’ll go ahead and do it without feeling so self-conscious. Or maybe I’ll get nervous and do what’s normally expected…