Somehow, working from he range of subjects Power Line normally explores (as they say, insight in one direction is blindness in another), I found myself surprised that this blog wanted to raise the “spring problem” at all, and in such a lengthy post.
Yes, there are a lot of people who find the amelioration of wintry rigors a psychological challenge. I might inject, just for the record, that there are places, San Diego area, e.g., that don’t suffer such a problem because spring never goes away, it just gets hotter, and that’s called summer. So we’re talking upper midwest weather, and the psychic problems of meeting a period of increasingly ingratiating weather with the challenges that it presents to our tendency (the medievals called it “acedia,” a soup of emotions mixing depression, sloth, anxiety, and willnessness) encouraged by winter to wallow in our acquiescence in joylessness. Becoming cheerful is an effort. Enjoying ourselves is like doing sit-ups. Easier to just close one’s eyes to the season, and go on being consistent, i.e., consistently sour.
Do I sound like I’m making fun? In no way--this is one reason why suicides go up in spring. Better to be dead than have to face living again. There’s simply nothing so irritating as spring unless it be meeting people who are enjoying life, are happy, want you to be happy (curses on them!).
So I’m grateful for the post, particularly since it interrupts the seemingly interminable scans Power Line insists on giving the miserably boring Obama phenomenon. Obama is such a non-person, entirely the invention of white middle-class guilt. If you don’t do “guilt"--and I recommend it--then you don’t creates Obamas to curse and acuse oneself with.
