Op-ed: Harry Morgenthau, Really Listening

On Friday morning, I opened my window for the first time since November.
Sunlight lay in long strips across my quilt and I could feel the warmth on my face as I
struggled with the crank, still half lying in bed, my mouth full of the rosemary bush that
dwells on my windowsill. Rising to my knees, I leaned heavily on the brass and the
window swung outward, screeching with the released pressure of a long winter. The
sound of the world immediately rushed into my room, like ears popping after a plane
ride. A truck rumbled up College Street and the side door to Munroe opened and swung
shut. I’d forgotten what really listening was like. I held my fingers to the screen and
tested the breeze gingerly, then spread my palm across the mesh and smiled, feeling the
warm air against my skin.

Each year spring catches me by surprise. In mid-February I tell myself that I can
see it coming – the light is changing, I say, and think I know what I’m talking about – but
soon it snows again, the sun goes flat, and I give up. My hat stays resolutely on my head
and I drag my feet through the resilient grayness and then one day I open my window and
its spring and I’ve missed it all over again.

In class, I am often told to rely on reason. A sharp mind can carve understanding
out of the bones of the past. But as much as I would like to, I am never quite able to
apply it to the natural world. Professors beseech us to run order through chaos, but nature
leaves me with a pile of unanswered questions and a dull pen. Spring is chaos, and it is
because I cannot understand it that I love it. Reason does not apply to spring, and the
more I miss it happening, the more I realize I will never be able to see it all happening,
and, somehow, I am comforted. Would Friday have been so pleasant if I had known it
was coming?

I woke up this morning to snowflakes clouding my window, and grinned – there
was nothing else I could do. Spring had ducked its head again, slipping off into the
darkness like so many dance floor lovers on a Saturday night. I located the hat that I had
blissfully ignored for the last few days, pulled it low over my ears, and felt the familiar
quiet of winter again. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll have another shot at really listening.