One can certainly hope that spring is officially in the air. The warmer days are becoming more consistent and even the stubborn remainders of this year’s bitter winter fade. Yet in spite the debris exposed as the giant piles of accumulated snow dissolve taking with them our memories of the difficulty we have just recently collectively endured, spring is a time of forward-looking optimism. With the first delicate flowers pushing through the just-thawing earth, we are inspired to shake off our own sleepiness and embrace the vernal renewal.
The arrival of longer days and the optimism that always seem accompany them brings with them a new energy to commit to the strategic plans and goals set during the customary winter planning. So many of us make use of the slower business days of January and February to collect with colleagues to consider vision and direction for the months and years ahead. Then as March and April finally arrive, we find the energy to take the difficult steps to implement the opening salvos of our work. Perhaps it harkens to our agrarian past, but the difficult seems more attainable as we experience the annual resurrection of our landscape from its icy grip to abundant life.
As the well-considered designs take form in the actions of the institutions, families and companies in which we count ourselves to be part, we are reminded of the steady hand that nature employs in its own work. Spring arrives not in an instant but through a process. Each step is implemented in its own time and with its own effort – all in concert and resistant to failure. Some elements, overwhelmed by the harsh season now passed or having completed their own life cycles, fail; yet others eagerly replace them. Now is the time, let’s go to work.