The Cold Dead Fingers Of Winter

What is it about winter that's so disheartening? Why is it that one mention of the year's coldest months sends shivers down one's spine? Okay, I know, cold weather is inherently COLD, how can't you shiver? But rhetorically speaking, the shivers of anger, resentment, bitterness, hopelessness and all-around poor attitudes seem to reverberate through the collective backbone of who we are come October and November, and continue until March or April.

Doug, the pastor of the church community my wife and I have been becoming a part of, said to me quite bitterly one particularly crisp evening that "The cold, dead fingers of winter are upon us." Now, the only thing hopeless about Doug seems to be his hopelessly positive outlook on life- seriously, this guy WRITES BOOKS about hope. What is it about winter that can bring even this hope-filled man to his knees?

Jalyn, my manager at work, has a generally sunny disposition and by all appearances loves life. But these days, she tells me she can hardly get out of bed because she hates the cold so much. She tells me that she is literally scared to death of the next few months, because she dreads the cold THAT much. I will throw in an asterisk here and tell you that she is from the West Coast; we Midwesterners nod in understanding that a West Coaster in Minnesota is about as close to the proverbial "fish out of water" as one can get, but still… fear of winter?

As I talk to the many people that I come into contact with at my job at Starbucks, the consensus seems to be the same: winter sucks. And when I ask people where they're from, the majority of them rather sheepishly admit that they're from here. So shouldn't they be used to this? Beyond being used to it, shouldn't they maybe even embrace it as a part of who they are? Apparently not. The votes have been cast, the chads have fallen like icicles from rooftops , and no recount is necessary; it's unanimous, winter is SO not cool.

Then there's me. I love winter. The colder, the better. A city wrapped in a thick blanket of snow is as comforting to me as a blanket is to a 3-year-old. For me, June through about the beginning of September are the harshest months, the time when my hope sinks and I tend to be bitter and not get out of bed. I usually bottom out about the end of July or beginning of August- just go and read my blog postings from that time of year! But then a funny thing happens: right about the end of September or beginning of October, right about when everyone else seems to go into depression mode, my morale and general outlook on life spikes significantly. That's right: the time of the year when the air becomes crisp, and the trees change color and begin to die, and when the frost kills off everything and you have to start scraping your car off when you're already late for work, and the first snow causes rush-hour traffic to stand still- this is my most wonderful time of the year.

I've tried to understand exactly why this is my favorite time of year, but I can't quite put my cold, dead finger on it. I know someone out there is reading this and thinking "Well, it's because you're a sick and twisted individual; you think the movie 'Fargo' is hilarious, your idea of uplifting music is the typically depressing Midwestern emo scene and rain-soaked Northwest bands with names like 'Death Cab For Cutie', and the hardest you've ever laughed was at a picture of a hearse being obliterated by a city bus." To which I would say "Yes! But…" I am by no means a sad, bitter or pessimistic person. Cynical? Sometimes. Sardonic? Okay. Irreverent? Definitely. But I'd like to think I can be positive and hopeful in even the worst of situations, and that when people are at their lowest, I can be an uplifting influence in their lives.

Now, I don't claim to be entirely consistent on any of these counts. Generally speaking, though, could this be why I enjoy my winters? I mean, when everything is dying, when everyone else seems to be down and out and hating life, I feel like I am at my best. Why is that?

I went for a walk today. I'll admit it wasn't by choice- I had to drop off the Focus at the shop, and had no place to go except for the Dunn Bros two miles down the road. I was a dork and had forgotten my hat and gloves, but off I went, walking down Minnetonka Blvd, heading directly into the 25-degree windchill and lugging my laptop around my shoulder. This sucked at first. It was cold, and the road is tree-lined and mainly shady, so any warmth the sun was offering was being soaked up by the trees. And the thought that it was two miles, or 10,560 feet, or approximately 40 minutes to my destination, did not at all help. But I noticed this funny thing happen after about 10 minutes: I began to adapt. My body got over the initial shock of the cold; my mind, the initial shock of the long haul ahead. I became less concerned with my internal affairs, and more concerned with the external, what was around me. It was quiet, or as quiet as the middle of Minnetonka can get, and there were some animals in the woods, scuttling around. The sun was bright, casting the trees and grass as a red-orange and the sky a frosty blue. It was really pretty outside, and I was lucky I stuck it out long enough to allow myself to adapt- and to enjoy a steaming cup of coffee at the end of it.

Many a study has been done that has chronicled humans' amazing ability to adapt to changing surroundings, proving that as uncomfortable as we may be in any sort of environment- climatic or otherwise- it's in our DNA, our very makeup as humans, to self-tweak and change, if only just a little, to allow ourselves to function properly in a new environment and find the good and the life that is present in these new surroundings. At the same time, we also possess an incredible ability to NOT change, to refuse to adapt, and to hold tight to things that we insist must NOT change, must NOT adapt. And oftentimes, this leads to us becoming so obsessed with NOT adapting that we lose what we were holding tight to in the first place, or find ourselves so averse to our surroundings that we become completely irrelevant and eventually, for all practical purposes, dead. It is our God-given ability as humans to adapt, and- while in some rare cases it may be necessary- going against this part of our nature may be undoing our ability to relate and survive.

I will be the first to admit that I suck at adapting sometimes. Like the summertime, the heat and overbearing sunlight kills me, and I just plain don't want to do much of anything, and so I allow myself not to adapt. This leads to the very depression, bitterness and bad attitude that I profess to lament, the state that everyone around me seems to get into in the wintertime. Eventually, I pull myself out of it, and I do end up adapting to the heat and do plenty of things and go plenty of places during the summertime, but it's not easy. Without excusing myself, though, is it possible that the need for a person to be positive and uplifting is slightly less of a need during the warm weather months, when most people seem to already be at their highest point?

I guess all I'm trying to say here in a very roundabout way (and thank you for bearing with me through this extremely long blog post!) is that everybody at one point or another re-evaluates who they are and what they should be doing with themselves, and as I sit and try to put two-and-two together about my own life, maybe my love of winter in the face of all the resentment toward this season is a sign that in some way I'm supposed to be the proverbial spark in the dark place, or blossom on the cow pie, if you will. I feel like I can make a difference in this world by showing how good it can be to adapt oneself to the cold and otherwise crappy seasons in life. Everything comes in cycles, in seasons, so let's stop dreading the inevitable- and oftentimes necessary- and try to adapt, to embrace the good in where we're at in life; whether we're wrapped up in the warm, comforting arms of summer, or the cold dead fingers of winter are beginning to brush our cheeks, we can live well, enjoy our lives and be useful to those around us no matter where we're at.