I grew up in Western Canada where the snow is often light and fluffy. I moved to Eastern Canada in 2013 and was introduced for the first time to the heavier and wetter snow that is akin to this region. Another piece of Eastern Canadian culture that I was introduced to was the regular snow plowing of residential streets which did not exist in the municipality that I had come from.
It was great that the residential streets were cleared and enabled our small car to be able to navigate the slippery and snow–laden roads. However, what I did not realize after our first snowfall was that the plows left a two-foot–tall snow bank that blocked our driveway. The snow plow had come by our residential area late at night and, consequently, I then heard several neighbours shovelling their driveways shortly after the plows had passed by.
This late–night shovelling activity by my neighbours was puzzling to me, until I realized that I was greeted in the morning by a two-foot–tall frozen snow bank that I could not level with my plastic shovel. A grueling several hours later, after chipping away at the frozen snow bank with an axe, I learned a valuable lesson about needing to clear away the remaining snow bank after a snowfall.
In our daily life, there are a lot of tools, mechanisms, organizations, and people that often assist us in conducting our work or our lives, much like how the snow plows cleared away the majority of the snowfall to help us drive through our residential roads, there is still a responsibility on our own part to be prepared to contribute and manage the other challenges that remain in our lives in order for us to continue on our way.
There are many helping professionals around us that provide assistance to us, but we also have to do the hard work of clearing away the things in our lives that block us from moving on in order to fully access the help we need to cultivate healthy rhythms and lifestyles.
Sometimes those proverbial frozen snow banks can be daunting and challenging for us. Luckily, another lesson I learned recently after the large snowfall here in Borden, is that there are plenty of neighbours on my street who helped one another dig out their driveways. This is a good reminder that we are never alone when having to dig ourselves out of challenging situations.
By: Capt Thich Truong, Chaplain Course Director, Canadian Armed Forces Chaplain School and Centre, CFB Borden
