The Cold Shoulder

As the September air crispens and the days begin to shorten, I await my second winter in the New England with equal parts relief and excitement. Relief, because my roommates and I will no longer depend on an elaborate system of strategically-placed fans to prevent our AC-less anachronism of a dormitory from becoming a veritable inferno. Excitement, however, for reasons that are much more complex, and nearer and dearer to my heart.

For some reason, I have always been inordinately fond of snowfall and the cold. I revel in the austere winter aesthetic of bare trees and gray skies, and can raptly watch snow fall for hours.

Alas, before I moved to the Northeast for college, I lived the majority of my life in the Piedmont of North Carolina, a land of underwhelming winters. Annual snowfall is measured in inches instead of feet. I have regularly sported shorts and a t-shirt in January, and occasionally even sweated. The mere prospect of anything more than an inconsequential dusting precipitates general disarray, with panicked shoppers emptying market shelves of necessaries like milk and eggs, and schools canceling classes left and right. Snow typically melts into puddles within 24 hours of landing—leaving me with a feeling of emptiness on the inside.

When I decided to attend Harvard late in the characteristically mild North Carolinian winter of 2014, I thought the hibernal tides would finally turn in my favor. The Northeastern winter of epic proportions that had been recently bestowed upon Harvard only raised my expectations. I had read about a record-setting 108.6 inches of snow, including 65 inches of snowfall in just February, and about gargantuan blizzards dropping two feet of snow and forcing Harvard to cancel school on multiple occasions. I had begun to salivate for an encore—the Northeastern winter would surely deliver, once graced by my presence—only this time I would live it in person rather than vicariously.

The winter of my freshman year, however, was an utter disgrace. Cambridge did not see a single snowflake before winter break. Boston averaged a temperature of roughly 37 degrees over the season, making it the second warmest winter recorded in Boston history. Contrary to my hopes, school was never cancelled, and the biggest blizzard of the season narrowly missed the area, coming tantalizingly close. I had anticipated a winter wonderland, but for some reason winter decided to turn a cold shoulder to Cambridge. I felt personally offended by the travesty of a winter.

Nevertheless, the lackluster winter caused me to realize that the forces that control the weather lie outside of my control, and they are coldly indifferent to my desires and whims. It was highly solipsistic for me to expect that my presence would somehow metaphysically alter the laws of nature, and even more so for me to take the warm weather as a personal slight. The unlacquered truth is that nature has neither friends nor foes.

Admittedly, it is no great revelation that I do not exercise some sort of telekinetic control over the weather. Nevertheless, it is all too easy to fall into such logical pitfalls, especially given our inherent egotism as human beings. In the ironic words of David Foster Wallace, “everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” Though this egocentrism goes unnoticed when we function on autopilot—it may even be salutary under normal circumstances—it can be stretched to absurd and even comedic ends if we are not careful.

And as a newly admitted and matriculated Harvard freshman, it was all too easy for me to succumb to this kind of self-centeredness. I was one of the select few that had made it through the admissions bottleneck, so the stars were supposed to obligingly align in my favor, right? My unfulfilled expectations for the winter of my freshman year served as the most distinct example of the shoddiness of this logic.

But it doesn’t make sense to renounce all hope simply because I can have no expectations. Despite my disappointment last year, I anticipate my three remaining winters at Harvard with glee—if I am especially lucky, the vagaries of nature and my desires may just coincide.

Juan V. Esteller ’19, a Crimson editorial executive, lives in Eliot House.