What is it about the cold weather that drives us indoors? Why is it that the summer is more desirable? In the summer, I don’t walk out of my house and say that I’m going to brave the heat wave. During the hottest days, I put my sunglasses on, wear my hair up, and stroll leisurely around in the sun, ignoring the fact that sweat is coming out of my pores. I let my body drink up the sun’s natural vitamin d and, my skin obtains a healthy glow.

In the winter, I walk with my head tilted slightly down, my shoulders hunched inward, trying to keep my scarf in place and protect myself from the crisp wind. Although a sunny day still brings a smile to my face, the shock of the frigid temperature instantly takes it away. The only time that I am genuinely satisfied with the winter is on a “warm” day.

Its funny how, the temperatures that we run away from in one season, we run to in the other. They both boast extreme temperatures albeit, in opposite directions, but how different are they really? As a child, I didn’t mind the change. I played in pools in the summer and tried to build igloos with my brothers in the winter. We never actually succeeded at that; more often than not, our igloos looked like poor attempts at small, circular, incomplete forts. My brothers would get into snowball fights and, I would occasionally throw one or two, when no one was looking.

Then I grew up and my whole viewpoint changed. Instead of playing outside during the cold months, I’d rather be indoors drinking a glass of wine by the fireplace. In the summer, I could live at the beach, or really, anywhere outdoors; I never want to leave the sun. Can we only ever enjoy both seasons when we are young? Does your mind just automatically press a switch when you enter into adulthood?

We dress in layers for one and shed our clothes for the other, but are they really so different? Is one really better than the other? I don’t think one is. It’s not the seasons that change between childhood and adulthood, it’s us, individually, that do. We seem to feel that, in order to grow up, we have to stop having fun, and in the process, we lose some of our appreciation for nature and all it’s beauty because, the winter, although cold, can be just as beautiful as the summer.