Seasons Change

By Karen Eden

Two days before school closed for summer break, it snowed in Denver, Colorado. It had been a long and grueling winter on the front range, and though springtime in the Rockies is notorious for bringing a wide range of weather surprises, few people had predicted this. Old Man Winter just didn’t want to go home.

“Will it ever end?” people asked themselves while defrosting their cars and shoveling the sidewalks. It’s a phenomenon that can really mess with your sense of time: watching it snow the week of Memorial Day celebrations.

As a former weather anchor in the Denver area, I know that TV ratings rise with the inches of snow. The more terrible the weather you forecast, the more the management will applaud, hoping the dire warnings will lead to increased viewership.

But I have news for everybody, and I say it every year. Our planet doesn’t stay still around the sun. It’s basic science. Seasons must change, and they always do.

I’ve learned to appreciate the science of meteorology, although at first it greatly intimidated me. It’s actually a very simple formula: The earth is trying to balance its temperature out. Temperature will gradually change as the days march on because of how our planet tilts as it revolves around the sun.

But my appreciation for weather systems goes way beyond science. You see, I have discovered that meteorology is a lot like life. Hardships and stressful times may roll in, but they won’t last forever. They can’t. That’s because the seasons of life are always changing, too.

One of the best pieces of advice I got from one of my TV news directors was that only one thing will never change, and that is that things will always change.

I am reminded of this every time I see former students on social media who have become respected karate masters in their own right.

“Isn’t that little so-and-so?” I’ll say to myself. But then I realize it’s been almost 30 years since I started my own martial arts career. Of course, they are a master too by now! Seasons change.

Our belts change from one color to the next, reminding us that we are not supposed to be stuck at one level or rank. We learn and evolve as martial artists, and our belts represent that. We grow as people, too. We were never designed to be stuck in one place.

Finally, being a weather anchor taught me that sometimes when the seasons change, it isn’t so pleasant. People change; relationships change; even our own bodies change as we wind through the years. We will all experience that unexpected snow at the end of May.

But for me, the things that will never change are my martial arts training and my faith. I will always have my belt wrapped around my heart, and I will always be able to look up when there’s ice below my feet. Good or bad, nobody gets through this world without their share of changes. Learning to accept this is as simple as understanding why the weather changes: It just does.

As I sit here and write this today, I’m wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I can hear the birds singing outside my open window. I am enjoying the breeze blowing across my desk while I can because I realize that this, too, will be gone in a few weeks. That’s just the way the world works. Seasons will always change.

You can contact Master Karen Eden at [email protected].