Founding is a snowball

Summary

It can happen to anyone.The urge is pure. You wake up to fresh snowfall. On goes your jacket and gloves and you’re out into the crisp, cool air.You reach down to clump some between your hands. The snow is sticky and soft. You reach down for more and pack it in. Soon it’s so big that you set it down to roll. How the snow from the ground sticks to it. How it grows.Behind you there are other places with other hands rolling balls and little snow left on the ground. Ahead of you is clean and white. It’s only when looking back that a trail appears.Sometimes you push alone. Sometimes others push with you. It can be just one person or a few. When you all push together the ball rolls faster. It grows fast too. Wonder at how this thing that once fit in the palm of your hand that now has room for two, three, four pairs of hands.There are moments the ball rolls so fast you fall behind. You’re no longer guiding it— You’re chasing it! There are moments when it won’t budge and you have to count to three so you can all push it in unison.It’s okay if the other hands push somewhere slightly off course. You’ll stubbornly fight to redirect it to where you want it to go. Humbly, the best direction is often neither where you nor they are pushing, but the place it ends up rolling somewhere in between.If the other hands are pushing back directly against yours, the ball will falter. As it does, you might start to argue. In those times, hands might have to stop pushing. Sometimes they’re theirs. Sometimes they’re yours.It’s hard to tell what part of the snowball is theirs and what part is yours. It’s senseless to try to split it up. Instead, it’s best when someone reaches toward the ground, clumps snow between their hands, and starts afresh.There is grief in parting. But that needn’t be all you feel. Now that you’re out of each other’s way, you can wave adieu with a grin. You’ll both roll much bigger snowballs than this one.Keep the ball moving. If it stops, you might never get it started ag...