It just takes a couple of weeks in Malta to switch from a hard winter to a soft spring.
Over at continental Europe such changes take weeks, if not months. Here, surrounded by the sea, winter is moderate and storm systems are easily dispersed.
The sea itself, which just a few days ago appeared as rough and dangerous, takes only a couple of days to switch from an angry storm to a calm and pleasant sea, the one we love most and which we associate with Malta’s presence in the middle of the sea.
This, and echoes of it right along the line, is what makes Malta such an attractive place where people from whatever nation come together to live a life of pleasant interludes.
It may equally be said that the character of the Maltese very much resembles the weather: you can still get days of anger and storms but these soon calm down and pleasant Spring takes over.
We may think that political arguments rule our country but that, if anything, regards only the people in the political bubble, the hotheads inside the main parties. Outside the bubble, people go about their daily lives which can include any amount of anger or tension, but these tend to be personal and thus circumscribed.
Other than that, we have an entire series of events, festas, to entertain us and keep us away from harm. People were shocked last week to see so many thousands celebrating a saint, St Patrick, who has absolutely no connection with Malta. Such people did not realise St Patrick was just another excuse for people to meet and drink together.
This whole set of circumstances accounts for our sunny disposition which ensures our conflicts are of brief duration and our enmities are more shallow than deep. Other peoples can harbour anger and vengeance for long periods of time, we on the other hand get over it and our attention is easily attracted elsewhere.
Does this make us perfect? Not at all. But like the sunny breezes of Spring, it enables us to forget the cruel winter storms so that when the storms come back, as they inevitably do, we remember that Summer and Spring are near and the winter storm is soon over.
As a people, we did have our storms too and we must have thought they would never pass. But they did. We must have thought too that political hatred and enmity would never disappear from our midst. But slowly, and with some exceptions, the clouds of hatred and anger moved away and the sun shone again.
Over the past months, we have often argued about the many people who are coming to live among us from so many nations. Granted that many of these come for economic reasons, but many more come and keep coming because Malta, with its smallness, its unique offer and, let’s say it, its weather attracts them here from the icy wastes of Northern Europe and other areas.