Talk about weather

It all started with a small talk about weather…

This is early February in New Jersey. After a few historical cold days at around zero °F degrees, it shot right to the sixties.

Walking my daughter out of her piano lesson, she commented on the weather:

“This is crazy. This is exactly what’s been said about global warming. In a winter day, you got so cold, but the next day you got so warm.”

“But no one is doing anything about it, not even myself. I just keep doing the same kind of things.”

I saw an opening and decided to use it for explaining a concept:

“It’s hard to change our own habits and behaviors.”

“But to do something to the climate, it needs many people to change behaviors, and it’s much harder.”

“Remember I always ask you and your brother to ‘manage yourself’, which is to choose the right behaviors for yourself? This is relatively much easier than if you have to ask other people to change their behaviors. This is why those who successfully convinced other people to change behaviors – for the better – are remembered as heroes, because it’s so hard to do. Like Martin Luther King, he changed people’s behaviors of a whole generation and the generations after him. This is why people remember him.”

“So you may want to ask yourself when you are still young. Will you be just okay for a “well-managed self” after you grow up, or you want to do more and affect others on their behaviors, and that will be a lot harder.”

My daughter went on silent for a few seconds, after my “lecture”. This is absolutely a good sign, which tells me that she was thinking of my words. For a teenage girl, this is all I can wish for. Quickly though, she changed the subject and moved on talking about how much she enjoyed the new Spider-Man movie and how she is never tired of listening to its theme song Sunflower…

Let’s just enjoy this warm weather in the heart of the winter…while we still can.