Photo by Igor Karimov on Unsplash
Winter is coming. I’m not sure when it does officially, but the most prominent moment happened last night. In Europe, the clocks went back by one hour.
Despite it taking place every year, there’s something quite alarming and unsettling about it. I think it’s the way that suddenly our concept of time gets thrown off. Darkness seems to hit randomly, and as the days go by, more quickly.
Nothing quite illustrated the shift in seasons better than the biblical weather we had last night in Brussels. There was torrential rain and howling winds, seemingly out of nowhere. The days preceding had been relatively warm and mild. It’s also a stark contrast to those uncharacteristically soul-scorching summer days we had this year. Those days are seemingly long gone.
Part of me feels a sense of relief with the coming of winter. The warmer weather made me feel additional pressure to go out and enjoy it. That can be a blessing when you have the energy, but for me, I needed to rest. At least now, rest feels more naturally in line with the seasons. It’s nice to not be at odds with the wrold.
Yet the flowery imagery of a warm winter indoors feels less idyllic when it makes going out harder. Yesterday, I wanted to get a few thousand more steps in, only to find the weather incredibly miserable. It’s harder to keep a step goal up when your umbrella is being blown around the place. My face was constantly hit by that cold, heavy rain that I forgot this season brought. In this, I do worry about how I might keep myself from becoming too insular.
But I’m also conscious that we have a tendency to dramatise such things. The weather in our modern age doesn’t logistically change a whole lot, at least for many of us. Access to food is broadly the same, and public transport runs the same all year round. We are hardly agrarian farmers who need to completely change our living patterns as a result of a shift in climate.
In the past, my coaching work talked aobut how much all of this is mental. The more that we say that winter is rough, the more we make it true. So it is better not to dwell on it, seeing it all as a trick of the mind. I think there is wisdom in this, but I also realise that we can go a bit too far with this idea that everything is just a thought.
Seasons change. Our bodies naturally change with them. This is a natural cycle that has been imprinted in our bodies for many millenia. Pretending this isn’t the case may end up in us bypassing our natural biological rhythms.
So I think we ought to find a balance. I think we can take cues from our environment, without making it dictate everything we can and cannot do. I have naturally found myself going towards hot drinks and warmer comfort meals. It’s what my body wants, and so it’s good to follow this natural inclination. Ayurveda highlights the seasons very clearly, and it is something that western approaches could certainly learn from.
But otherwise, life continues without a grand need for change. When I was less sick, this meant still having the willpower to go to the gym even if it was dark either early in the morning or by the evening.
For me, the order of the day is rest, sprinkled in with the occasional extroversion and connection. The changing of the season doesn’t change that.