According to the heads on the television news, twenty inches of snow fell since the blizzard of ’10 began. Not having gone outside to check, I can neither confirm nor deny.  It makes no difference.  Whatever fell, fell.  And it’s falling still, as the wind continues to blow.

One of the things that distinguishes people is whether they’re proactive or reactive.  It’s always been my view that we take charge of our lives and circumstances, rather than let circumstances dictate how our lives will be.  This isn’t meant as a commentary on free will, but rather a reason to wake up in the morning and get out of bed.  Maybe we are destined to get up and out, and maybe we make the choice for ourselves. 

But there’s nothing like a snow storm to remind us that that there are forces great than us, greater than governments, greater than our politics or philosophies.  We tend to get very puffy about our beliefs, as if they matter more than anything else.  They don’t matter a whit to snow.

After the disastrous Giants loss to Green Bay yesterday, Dr. SJ informed me that it would be a wise idea to do some snow shoveling.  It was certainly piling up, and her thought was that I should jump on top of it and make a dent before it grew to such large proportions that we would have to wait for spring to get out of the house.  My initial reaction was that she just wanted to pay me back for giving her a snow shovel for Christmas.

I told her that it was a fruitless gesture.  Given the high winds and ongoing snow, whatever I removed would be swiftly replaced by nature, as the wind blew snow into the void. Nature abhors a vacuum, I explained.  My knowledge of physics seems to improve whenever it works to my advantage.

She put on her coat, gloves and hat and went outside to shovel.  She did a fine job of it.  I felt awfully badly watching her working so hard, as I drank my hot chocolate with those tiny marshmallows covering the top surface of the mug.  She came in, glistening from the snow that caught on her cute little hat, satisfied that she had made a significant dent in the snow.  I handed her a mug of hot chocolate.

Of course, this morning the path she shoveled last evening doesn’t exist.  It was filled, probably within minutes, and then completely covered by the new snow whipped by the wind.  She took charge of her world by braving the cold, the wind, the snow, and making a difference.  But she made no difference at all, as the morning revealed.

There are a number of lessons to be learned.  To let go of things we can’t change or control, despite our desire to seize control of our world and make a difference.  To come to grips with the fact that we will face frustrations, and despite our best efforts, will find ourselves unable to fix things or make them better.  Over time, even the most proactive of us will realize that we can’t change everything.  Some things, like a blizzard, will happen regardless of what we do, and some things, like the snow filling in the shoveled path, will render our efforts to change things futile.

Rick Horowitz hasn’t been doing much writing lately, but he posted yesterday when few others did.  He explains that it’s not because he had nothing to say, but because of his cognitive dissonance.

You see, what I might want to say is that it’s about time for blood to run in the streets. What I might want to say is that it’s time for a revolution. What I might want to say is that if you work for the government, you are someone the rest of us should consider putting down.

But that’s not really right.

And I haven’t figured out yet how to deal with the fact that I do, actually, think it’s true that we need a revolution, with the fact that people really do get hurt in revolutions, and with the fact that I also don’t think this line of thinking is really right.

The inability to make things better, whether for yourself or others, breeds frustration.  To the proactive person, living in a state of frustration is unacceptable.  Something must be done.  As lesser efforts fail to produce improvement, more extreme measures seem necessary.  It eventually reaches the point where a person might think that it’s time for “blood to run in the streets.”

But as Rick realizes, “that’s not really right.”  He knows that it’s just frustration talking, and sense of hopelessness and futility.  If blood ran in the streets, it would likely be his.  That’s not going to help anyone.

One of the things that contributes to this sense of hopelessness is the constant bombardment of bad things we endure at the hand of what’s supposed to be a benign government.  Some become hyper-radicalized by knowing too much about the bad, where we begin to get the sense that the blizzard will never end. 

In almost 30 years, I’ve seen more than my share of bad things happen in our system.  There has also been plenty of good.  While we occasionally applaud the good, it seems rather unnecessary.  Isn’t the whole point of this exercise to serve society, to provide good for all, all the time?  All of our favorite platitudes remind us how great we are, yet the reality we read about daily tells a different story. 

One such platitude is “ignorance is bliss.”  Sadly, proactive people aren’t satisfied with being ignorant.  There is a blissful state out there waiting for us, and we run from it as fast as we can.  We can hide our heads, squint, and make the world seem acceptable, maybe even pretty good.  And guess what?  It actually is pretty good. 

Almost every person reading this has a wonderful life.  There are people whose suffering, whose frustration, whose problems dwarf ours. As many problems as our country, our system, has, we can’t begin to compare the horrors of scope and grope with watching our children die of starvation or cholera.  As the wind blows and snow comes down, I’m sitting in my library where it’s warm.  Not everyone can say that.

Coming to grips with the fact that no one, no matter how proactive you are, can control everything is difficult.  There are some new blogs around demanding extreme measures of lawyers, because the system is so awful that we can no longer take it. 

While we all feel frustration from time to time, we similarly realize that we are no more likely to foment revolution today than we are to stop the snow from falling.  Indeed, I’m as fearful of those who proclaim the time for revolution is at hand, as they have the arrogance to believe their vision of “justice” is somehow true, and should be summarily imposed on us.

The time will come to start shoveling snow in earnest, when it will be worthwhile and the path won’t be filled by new drifts.  As much as proactive people want to have an impact, it can’t happen until the snow gives way.  That’s just how it is.  We can’t change some things.  Knowing what we can change, knowing what is worth the effort and then making the effort despite the frustration, is a difficult thing for proactive people to accept. 

But we don’t have a choice.  We can’t stop the snow that’s still falling.  And when it does stop, we can’t sit by and do nothing to improve our situation.