Observations

My sister often blogs in bullet points. I think it's a good method for today . . . I just had a very provocative conversation with a winter over woman who believes very differently than I do, and it's made me question what I think about winters and wintering. Here's some thoughts . . .

* When people winter here, in this far away place, they lose the long view. The USAP is about far more than their winter over experiences. And the more they winter, the more distant from the real program they become. The big picture isn't here during the winter. It is more accessible during the summer -- when more folks are coming and going. The full bloom of it can only be seen by interacting in the planning meetings with the client. If you have never seen that, you have no idea how big and far reaching and important the USAP really is. You can only see how Raytheon treats you (which is, indeed, shittier than even they think) and all the confusing injustices -- which aren't actually confusing when you have been exposed to the big picture.

* These current winter overs don't know they can't see. They think they have it all figured out.

* These current winter overs actually think they are recovered after three months traveling and being off work. And I know -- because I have some time between my winter and me -- that three months doesn't allow you to process what has happened, no matter how good or bad your winter was. Doing multiple winters just prevents the lesson and makes the lesson that much harder when it does come.

* The lessons from the winter are big and hard and complicated and arrive subtly and slowly. And if you don't go out among them and compare and try and feel alienated and question why you feel alienated, then you don't get the lessons.

* These people are comfortable and well kept here, but that isn't actually contusive to making well rounded, good people. It isn't the way the world teaches us. The world is a cruel, harsh, heartless place that must be endured. And by enduring it, we as creatures are challenged and grow and actually get to a place to grasp some lessons and make some changes. We must go out there, forced or not, and experience living in it's full volume. Having life too easy retards the learning. It's like rich kids becoming terrible people and beautiful people being dumb. It is in the heartache and the struggle and the endurance and in the overcoming that we really embrace what it is to be human. And by engaging and TRYING we advance the race; we invent literature, we see more clearly, we make breakthroughs. Choosing to come here and live easily year after year with only three months to go out there and hear the full volume? Nope. Three months a year is not enough time to fully self actualize. To fully engage. To try out the lessons and see what you've learned. Coming back here is the same, year after year . . . there are only a few lessons you can exercise. The rest require greater complexity.

* Wintering causes life to shrink into a very tiny tunnel and the little pieces that make up life are magnified. Nothing gets complicated with getting the kids to school or negotiating traffic or making dinner. Dinner is just there. No kids. No traffic. No mundane little things to distract you . . . so you get some pretty heavy doses of lesson learning. Big, purified LESSONS that are really intense. And it makes you wise in a way -- because your experiences are so uncluttered. But what good the lesson if you don't ever want to go out there and try it out?

* Wintering and summering are vastly different animals. Summering allows you to be connected to the mess of living because it comes with you. Wintering might be a personal challenge the first year, and it definitely will test you down to your very fiber. But summering offers more of that life complexity. And 4-1/2 months here balances better with out there. 7-1/2 out there in the noise is better than 7-1/2 months here, isolated.

* Multiple wintering is hiding and avoiding the lessons. It gives you a place to go to never listen to what this place is actually trying to tell you.

* When strained through my value strainer . . . seen through my eyes now, many years after my winter . . . life is about the full engagement and about continuing to scare yourself and challenge what you know and try new thoughts on. And it's about learning the big life lessons and then going out there among them to see if you can execute those lessons in the face of distractions and kids and traffic.

* Winter feels big and intense, as if you can see the TRUTH -- but actually it's really boiled down to really simple little pieces. The big test is whether you take those big intense things and understanding them out in the noisy complexity.