Frost on a window makes patterns no one designed. Some beauty only shows up when it’s cold.

Certain good things are produced by conditions nobody would have chosen. Cold is not kind, and it still makes something intricate out of a plain pane of glass, with no one arranging it. That does not make a hard season worth wanting, but it does mean a bad stretch is not automatically empty of anything worth keeping.

If this is a cold month for you, look once for what it might be making. Something you have learned to do alone, a friend who turned out to be steady, a smaller life you half like. You are not required to be grateful. Only do not assume there is nothing there.