Humans Are Not Meant for Hibernation

The poet T. S. Eliot in his famous poem "The Wasteland," calls April the
"cruelest month," because the showers of April stir up the dull and
dormant roots of trees and flowers to begin bursting forth with new life
instead of allowing them to remain comfortably asleep in the frozen ground
of winter.
Yet the sleep of tree roots and flower bulbs is the sleep of hibernation,
not of rest. Trees were meant to put out green leaves; tulips were meant
to push up through the soil and produce beautiful blossoms. Human beings
are also meant to grow, to mature, to blossom, not to hibernate in the
frozen sleep of habit or tradition or familiarity. Paul says that we were
meant to grow until "we attain to the full height of the stature of
Christ."

Larry R. Kalajainen, Extraordinary Faith for Ordinary Time, CSS Publishing
Company, Inc.