Winter wants you to stop hustling and grinding
It took me until last year at 41 years old to finally acknowledge the beauty and find a deeper understanding of winter.
I was born in the summer and always associated summer with all the best things: school is out, ice cream cones, sleeping in on a warm day, swimming at the lake, long days, warmth, staying up late with friends in the neighborhood.
As I got older and was no longer in school, summer still held onto me as my favorite season. The brightness and warmth are uplifting and naturally we may feel more inclined to productivity during the parts of the year when we are not rushing home in the early evening, already dark outside, wanting only to change into a comfy pair of sweats and hibernate the rest of the night.
But, as I deepen my spiritual practice and continue to connect with the spirit world, recognizing that there is a significant bias baked into how all humans associate with concepts like ‘light’ and ‘dark’ and ‘cold’ and ‘warm,’ I had to acknowledge that many of those biases were the result of colonization of spirituality (I will eventually write on this more in depth, especially in reference to people who still ignorantly use terms like ‘dark magic’ or ‘black magic’).
And so, too, was my association with winter as a cold, dark period to be anxiously anticipated, begrudgingly endured, and eventually its end celebrated.
If you have found yourself progressing toward the symbolism of seasonality, cycles, and recurrent birth-death-rebirth symbolism, it will eventually follow that you find yourself kind of excited for winter.
This time of year brings a respite from the sweltering heat and humidity and allows the earth to retreat and rest, as she gathers her strength and resources within, preparing to bloom and create life again in a few short months.
And so, too, should it for humans. We are not so removed from nature biologically that we do not require rest and regeneration ourselves. Yet, this time of year, many of us find ourselves panicking that we feel sad, gloomy, unmotivated, tired, sleepier, and even depressed.
Guess what? Those are byproducts of the culture we’ve allowed to permeate our capitalist world.
Humans, just like the entire rest of the animal kingdom, were also meant to rest and find comfort in the cold, dark of the winter. We are also meant to spend time around the home or hearth, listening to stories, finding communion with others, and doing the inner work that can only be done in quiet contemplation.
I used to regularly experience seasonal affective disorder - SAD - until I started working on this mindset shift.
The mental strife many of us feel this time of year, is often the war inside us that we biologically want to retreat and rest - we feel compelled to resist the crushing expectation of constant productivity and socialization and consumerism and hustle culture…
However, literally every piece of media we consume tells us we should be out there crushing life and if we don’t feel like it, maybe we need a pill or a prescription or a treatment that will make us want to hustle and grind during the time of year our body, mind, and soul most want and need rest.
So, before you listen to someone telling you that you should always feel like leaving your house in the cold dark months and you should feel happy about getting out of bed on a 15ºF morning, remember that your ancestors knew this was the time of the year to make use of the harvest, huddle up close with loved ones for warmth, and thank the gods for the bounty they were given that year.
You are biologically wired to want to rest more when the days are shorter and colder. There is no shame in that, and I would argue it is your spiritual calling to do so.
The last couple years, I have found myself doing more of these things, and not only thriving, but finding increasing levels of peace and fulfillment in life. In no particular order:
chipping away at my growing stack of ‘to read’
learning new crafts, especially textiles like wood, fabric, jewelry-making, needlework
meditation practice
communing with spirits
writing, fiction and nonfiction
the endless renovation projects to be had in a 135 year old house
learning new cooking techniques
deep cleaning and organizing
purging things from my home I no longer need or that someone else can use more than me
signing up for online courses to learn new subjects
reconnecting with my musical studies of violin
You could look at these things as ‘productivity,’ but I would argue none of them are anything I consider contributive to income generation or work. They are all things I enjoy or have interest in, and there is no other point to them than a relaxing or educational endeavor.
So, my question is what do you find yourself doing in the cold, dark months that allows for rest and spiritual connection? How do you associate the colder, darker months with perspectives like death and rebirth?