If I have a grasp on the concept, after today the days start getting longer. This couldn't have come at a better time, the day after the shortest day of the year. Whatever cosmic implications there are about the solstice, what it means to me is that there is hope that spring will arrive yet again, in three months or so. This is just in time to keep me from feeling that winter will last until next fall. Every year, right about now, I come close to giving it all up and staying in bed forever.

There are a lot of things I don't believe in. I don't believe in much that can't be shown or proven or demonstrated or induced or deduced by use of facts and logic and reasoning. I'm pretty sure that what I can see is real, and sometimes I'm willing to take other people's word for what they can see. The rest of it? You have to convince me that it makes sense.

But I do believe in mathematics, which in its purest form is invisible. I believe in points on a line as surely as I believe in hope, which is also invisible, and a little more unprovable. Unprovable, but not improbable. The proof is anecdotal, maybe, but no less real for that. To me, hope makes as much sense as physics, and it's a little easier to grasp.

So on the darkest (or at least the shortest) day of the year, I have hope that the days will once again get longer, the sun will at some point appear more often and stay later, the trees will soon be filled with leaves, green and growing. You'll see, too. My hopes will be realized and I'll have the sun and the green leaves to prove it.