Judging solely by the blue bird I can see outside my window and not the 40 degree weather, I think it’s safe to say that spring is here. Spring with all her beautiful, unpredictable, beauty is here.

Spring is one of the four seasons. It is started, at least in the U.S., on the vernal equinox. A day when the day and night match an equal 12 hours. Outside of that, throughout several cultures and religions, spring is a time of rebirth and selection. It brings the world out of hibernation and back into real life. 

I find spring to be a time of hope. Spring is arguably the prettiest season, with the flowers and the blue sky. It has beautiful days and ones filled with rain, perfect for snuggling up with a movie or a book.

However, for most students spring is also a really stressful time. The last few months of school are arguably some of the most demanding. They are filled with last and important tests. With final projects. With sports and important competitions. They are filled with events, ceremonies, prom and graduation. All things that can seem life or death, but aren’t. They are just life, just important parts of life.

Spring, on the other hand, is life or death. Spring is a time of rebirth, where every population begins to repopulate, and while not all of them make it, it’s extremely important that some of them do. It is a time for rain to rehydrate the earth and prepare us for the hot and dry months to come. 

I think this is what makes spring so alluring. It is important and it shows its importance in so many small ways. Those small things make even our lives easier (except for the pollen, I could do without the pollen). Spring, simply by doing what it is supposed to do, does something so much bigger for each person, animal, bug, and plant on this earth. It is doing things for each one of us on such a large scale we can’t even understand it fully. 

Take, for example, the lilacs outside my door. They are repopulating the lilac species, they are providing pollen for bees, food for birds, they are giving me something to look forward to every morning, and a thousand other things that I don’t know about. They are touching so many lives without even realizing it, just by doing what’s best for them. 

Now I won’t go on to say that this is exactly like high school. I won’t say that what a person is doing right now affects every other thing in their life for the rest of their life because it doesn’t. High school doesn’t define anyone. What I will say is that over the new few weeks of school every person is on high alert, everyone is coming out of winter and has so much stuff still to do, even as finals week and the end of the year rapidly approaches. But just like spring, we are all doing it together. We are affecting others in ways we can’t even imagine and so as we make our ways toward summer, let’s all try to remember that, just like spring, we are bigger than what we, ourselves, can see. And every time a person steps outside and feels the sun on their face, or the wind, or the rain, they should remember that it’s not there just for them, but it is helping them anyways and maybe that’s what we should all be doing. 

I wasn’t put on the earth for the sole purpose of helping others, but maybe I can do some of that anyway. And even when I’m not trying, I’m still just as capable of helping or hurting people in ways I can’t even imagine. 

This reminder, along with the rain and the warmth, is why I love spring so much. It’s the perfect amount of change and the perfect amount of unpredictable. It is beauty and pain and love and warmth and sun. For all those reasons I give it a 9/10.