The morning starts with darkness all around us, a cold and unfriendly darkness that makes the warm dreamworld of bed hard to leave behind. There is no indication that we have to get up other than the clock. Nature tells us to snuggle down like bunnies under the porch, but the electromechanical whirl of time says we must get up. It must be obeyed.

After a short preparation, it is time to go outside. It’s the kind of cold that hits our face like a slap, sinking gradually down our spine and awakening all the warrior instincts needed to fight this. The electronic thermometer says it is just below zero, but that is unneeded. This is a cold that we feel at the bottom of our brain, a cold that tells us there is nothing but trouble. But we press on all the same.

The car, another device, balks at starting in this weather. The oil is thick and the battery is weak, so the cylinders prefer to stay just where they are a bit longer. Gradually it comes to speed, the gasoline ignites, and with a shudder there is a car. It will be warm in a bit, but for now we have to give it the time it needs to hit operating temperature.

Why do we do all of this? So much of it defies our own nature, but we press on with the rote requirements of life as we have come to know it. We do it because this is how we earn the money to afford a house and a car and have our relatives over for a few weeks a year that we can relax and enjoy it. We do this all to gain warmth.

Warmth is what our lives are all about. We like to be warm. Those of us who live in cold, dark places learn to see warmth as a long term prospect, something we have to achieve gradually through effort. Towards the equator, it’s not such a pressing problem. Many people to our south appear poorer than us in material things, but we forget that so much of our material world is designed around creating something they already have in abundance. Warmth.

In this respect, we aren’t that much different from cats. A cat will blithely sit in a window all day, watching the cold bunnies rootch around in the snow for something to eat. At the window, there is amusement and warm sunshine. That’s all a cat could possibly need. What separates us from cats is our interest in getting up when there is no sun to create an artificial world where warmth is brought to places that nature tells us it does not belong.

Today is the first day back at work for many people, and it is a hard one. We have to remind ourselves why we do all of this. It is to be warm, both physically and spiritually. That takes a lot of planning and effort, especially in a place like Minnesota. The sacrifices are worth it, but only over the long haul. We know what cold is only because we know what warm is, and we know warm only by the cold we compare it to. All the same, it’s best to remember what it is we are doing this for, lest we get caught up in the routine of routine.

We embrace the cold to create warmth. It’s not only for the sake of the cold and the dark morning lit only by the LED of a clock that we do this. It is for the world we create beyond it. What kind of warmth do we want to make of all this effort? The choice is largely our own.