I had a meeting on the University of New Mexico campus last week. It had been a rainy morning and the sun was trying to peek through in the afternoon (although the wind was wreaking havoc with it warming up). Campus doesn’t look its best in the winter but I have several places I make sure to walk by, places that remind me of my graduate school days, particularly the first round when I biked from one end of the campus to the other.
I love this fountain and some years it’s not running, other years it is (or so it seems). And then there’s that view of the mountains, on this day the snow giving them a brighter reflection than usual.
This scene gives me inspiration, motivation. This is the sort of thing I try to remind myself of on a bad day, the days when things that I am working toward feel so far away or each thing I seem to pick up drops back on the floor. Yes, those days.
But this scene takes me back to moving here to New Mexico and starting a new life, one with mountains and desert and all the things that were foreign to a Midwestern girl. It makes me happy to see.
When we’re having a bad day, week, or month, one of the hardest parts of it is to think past those clouds in the sky, to see the sun shining on the snowy mountains. It’s the hope that’s covered up. Somehow we have to remind ourselves that even when we can’t see it, hope and sunshine are there.
We need to hold on for another day. While it feels like bad times last forever, they can’t. We might feel hopeless because we’re tired of being hopeless, too. A little rest in the darkness can also make the morning light brighter.
There is always another day ahead.