Cold Weather is Good for the Soul
Each time I step outside in the crisp Colorado winter, a creeping, recurring, intimate feeling hits me: that the cold is good for my primal self.
The cold is grounding. Its humbling. While it can be immensely powerful and certainly should not be underestimated, it is a subtle reminder that we are much tougher than we make ourselves out to be. History has shown us, countless times before, that humans endure. For, when the entire earth was affected by a 536 A.D. volcanic eruption that caused ZERO sunlight for years, we survived. We humans became tougher. Sure, many died of famine and illness, but the tough survived because there was no other choice.
How in the heck did we do that? How did humans brave the cold weather, blizzard conditions, frostbite conditions, for so many generations, over such a wide expanse of earth from Wyoming to the Yukon, and Irkutsk to Svalbard?
We did it because we are, deep down inside, tough as fucking hell. We did it because we knew that our families back in caves and villages and hamlets and cities depended on us. We braved the cold not just for our family, but we braved it for our race. For humanity. If we didn't, then maybe we don't catch that snowshoe hare or buffalo or beaver. Maybe our family goes hungry and perishes this winter after all. Then maybe other families wouldn't have had opportunities to reproduce because of that.
See, when you are cold, you realize just how much you depend on warmth. Warm food, warm fires, and even warm feelings. Let's face it - few people are Ted Lasso-happy when its freezing outside.
Humans have managed to survive for, what, 70,000 years without butt-warmers in our car? Does it feel that insane that we managed to endure without an instant fireplace to heat our homes? My thoughts continue to wander...I think about how slick early hominids might have looked in this new Patagonia parka my mother in law got me for my birthday last year.
When I step back inside after being in the cold, my thermostat has my favorite temperature waiting for me. My coat hangs on a manufactured hook and dries off almost immediately. I didn't even have to slaughter an animal to get these coverings. There's a rug over my treated wood floor - wood from a tree in a forgotten forest that no one I know helped chop down.
I consider all the cold-ass days humans endured just so we all have access to smart thermostats. I consider ancestral shepherds meandering around the English countryside, spending their caloric worries on food insecurity and plague - not an extra blanket. Or Korean peasants hundreds of years ago who not only dealt with the cold, but depended on it to keep the ground cold and their kimchi preserved.
Maybe if we didn't brave the cold wearing nothing but pelts and hides, we wouldn't have learned that dealing with the cold is mind over matter. Hell, if we were afraid to climb over snowy peaks barefoot, Wif Hof might not even have come into existence. And so, when you are cold, its a reminder to you that this temperature change is but a flicker of humanity's time.
And if you live north of the 40th parallel, this theory might qualify as pure hogwash to you. But, whether you are cold for 5 minutes or 50 minutes, 5 hours or 5 days or 5 months out of the year, you remember just how hard your ancestors must have worked to keep humanity alive. To give you existence. And then?! .....your temporary chill becomes even more temporary. You become acutely aware of your pain points and how trivial they in fact are. It's cold, you think. Then you transport yourself to living with Nic Cage and the Croods 70,000 years ago. But what if our people hadn't discovered fire yet? Then the cold weather would just be the weather.
When I am cold, its a reminder that I don't have total control over my environment. I am still just one being on this planet. And I don't, in fact, live a cushy life of your own, predictable decisions and outcomes. The cold reminds me that I'm just one of billions of puppets playing a game of life in front of mother nature.
So next time you feel a little cold, put a sweater on. But please don't bitch about the temperature, you softie.