A Love-Hate Affair
I have a love-hate relationship with March. While it is my birth month and salutes the arrival of spring, it seems like it’s struggling with an identity crisis. I think March has a personality disorder and can’t decide who it wants to be. Sort of like me sometimes! If March had a tag line it might read: How do you like me now?
Exploring the Unpredictable Nature of March
Since I can relate to the many moods and vicissitudes of March, I shall refer to March as a female. If you’re anything like the month of March, you excel at the element of surprise. Being one of the most difficult months of the year to predict because she harnesses the potential to manifest qualities of every season in a 31-day period, she is sure to keep you guessing from one day to the next. March commands attention, which leaves little room for boredom and complacency. She is mysterious and untamed exhibiting both masculine and feminine qualities. A force to be reckoned, she wields her power to spring forth new life with warmth or extinguish it with cold indifference. Her disposition changes as a reminder that she is everything and anything she chooses to be. She is the keeper of light and dark knowing there is not one without the other. She is whole and beautiful, stormy and strong, a giver and a taker. She is the embodiment of acceptance and change. March understands that her only true adversary is Time because Time giveth and Time taketh. Knowing her lifespan is not infinite, March lives up to her greatest potential because she is in a race against Time. She is who she is and that’s her celebration of life.
The Personification of March
Aren’t we lucky to have such a remarkable reminder as March in our lives! I never really thought of March as anthropomorphic but with a tiny stretch of the imagination, she comes to life. March embodies all our qualities yet is limited in her expression. Her moods are expressed via the weather. If she is feeling happy and loved, she is sunny and warm. She invites nurturing and growth. If she is sad, she weeps tears of rain. If she is mad, she storms about bringing bitter cold and blinding snow. Other days, she is cloudy and still as if she is deep in thought. We all can relate to this. Yet, sometimes we allow our emotions to take over and we get stuck in the funky weather patterns of life. We struggle to find the sun and our perspective gets clouded over with fear, pain, and judgment. March reminds us that each new day offers a chance to start over and be different than the day before. We can choose our perspective. We can alter our patterns. We can become who we want to be. Like March, we will have good days and bad days and that’s okay. She invites us to experience all our cyclical changes and be present in the moment because just like the weather, nothing stays the same for long.
Decoding the Constellations: A Fun Fact
The March expression “Comes in like a lion and out like a lamb” isn’t referring to the weather as many of us think. It is believed that this saying has more to do with the constellations at the beginning of March. It begins with the constellation Leo. Leo (the lion) rises in the east to start March and ends the month with the constellation Aries (the lamb/ram) setting in the west. However, I still find myself playing along and hoping that March will go out like a lamb and take with her every last bit of winter. By the end of March, I am ready for spring to usher in warmer, brighter days.
