The seasons of cold draw now toward their leaving, and with them comes a quiet ache—for something not lost, yet never begun. It lingers, this sense, and I find myself dwelling there more often than I care to admit, as one might remain standing in a doorway long after the cause for crossing it has faded.
The days press forward with greater insistence. Light lingers longer upon the land, and the sun appears to temper its pace, as though willing us to believe that time itself has softened. Shadows lengthen and come to rest where once they fled, and there is an illusion—gentle, convincing—that more hours have been granted, that the world has widened its margin to invite fuller living. Yet the truth holds fast. The day keeps its measure. It always has.
There were things I once meant to take up—paths considered, callings felt, beginnings held just within reach. They were not idle fancies, nor were they taken lightly. Yet when the ground hardened and the season closed in, I set them aside, believing there would be time enough to return when the weather grew kind.
Had I been more steadfast from the first hardening of the ground until this present thaw—had I not trusted so fully in a later season—I might now stand further on my way. Instead, I find myself here, aware of motion without advance, having given many hours to the imagining of what might be done when conditions were more favourable, and finding now that those hours have passed into other claims.
The time once suited for lingering has thinned. It slips now between duties, narrow and unwilling to be held. What remains must first be given to obligation, and only after may I turn—if strength allows—toward quieter longings, long practised in patience, and now required to practise restraint.
There is work that cannot be deferred. The stores must be made ready. The household must stand secure. Those whose lives lean upon my constancy must know, without asking, that provision is no matter of chance. Their hunger is answered not by my pursuit of uncertain callings, but by the steady knowledge that there will be bread, that the roof will hold, that tomorrow has already been considered. In this, I find a stillness, though it is not without cost. For without such grounding, a man might scatter himself beyond recovery; and with it, he must sometimes let go of what he once hoped to carry.
So I remain, for a season, where I am set. I give myself to the necessary labour of these lengthening days, knowing that this, too, has its appointed time, and that some choices, once made, ask to be honoured fully.
And when the light begins again to withdraw—when the leaves turn and take upon themselves their final warmth, when the fields have yielded what they may and the house rests full and quiet—perhaps then what was laid aside will not accuse me. Perhaps then I will rise from rest not as one escaping labour, nor as one reclaiming what was lost, but as one who has borne his charge, and may at last answer what remains.
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