Wintering

"We tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical. I would not, of course, seek to deny that we gradually grow older, but while doing so, we pass through phases of good health and ill, of optimism and deep doubt, of freedom and constraint. There are times when everything seems easy, and times when it all seems impossibly hard. To make that manageable, we just have to remember that our present will one day become a past, and our future will be our present ... The things we put behind us will often come around again. The things that trouble us now will often come around again. Each time we endure the cycle, we ratchet up a notch. We learn from the last time around, and we do a few things better this time; we develop tricks of the mind to see us through. This is how progress is made." - Katherine May

I just finished Katherine May's Wintering, a tale of literal and metaphorical winters and how much they can teach us. It's a beautiful, lyrical defence of the moments when slowing down and stopping are absolutely required - illness, having a baby, grief and other crises that make rest and retreat non-negotiable, but also how we all need to embrace winter's lessons outside of extraordinary circumstances. It's a reminder for everyday life, not to move so fast that we miss what's right in front of us, not to continuously look away from pain and discomfort.

I could feel my nervous system calming in relief as I read it, the best antidote to the culture of urgency we are all schooled in and perpetually stressed by -  the expectations of immediate replies to communications, arbitrary work deadlines, constant productivity, burnout as a badge of honour, a creeping sense that we should have achieved something by a certain age, that opting to do less makes us lazy, means we'll miss out on something big, leaves us way behind everyone else or signifies that we are running out of time. 

Seeking a sense of perpetual progress and growth and outward, abundant production is applauded by society as much as living an extrovert, exterior life, one where people can feel sure we are achieving things. We reap the social rewards of this kind of behaviour - feelings of satisfaction and ease at fitting in, at the recognition we earn, at the salaries which reward certain employment, at the full diaries and chatter and constant distraction. It’s way less cool to stay home and slow down and not get stuff done, to have little to show for it (what is “it”, exactly?) There is no sense of there being any rhythm or flow to this pace, that being like this all the time is neither possible nor desirable. 

And then sometimes, when a moment of quiet and stillness or slowing or stopping occurs - happens to us, sometimes, despite our resistance - we are relieved. In spite of our best efforts to deny it, we are human animals, and  all animals need to rest once they exert energy or due to illness or injury. In addition, we are mammals with mammalian needs - in the winter we need to sleep more, move more slowly and eat more calories to conserve energy. I find that in summer it's easier to keep going at life hammer and tong - energy is higher, there's lots of distractions, there's maximum light and everything is bursting and full and juicy and hanging off the bough.

Now with autumn nearly done - it's December in less than 2 weeks! - once the baby is asleep at night, I stick my head out the back door and it it is cold and quiet and dark and still and the air smells smoky. My body is happy to receive this moment, to be reminded of what is necessary - that life isn't plotted on an upward growth curve, that there are spurts of change and moments when everything is quiet. Life spirals its way around and around the same places, only very slowly meandering upwards towards the light.

With kids' needs dominating most of my waking hours, I want to stretch the time I do have for myself, and winter is the right season. In the evenings when the children are in bed, if I fall too much into the well-worn groove of pouring a large class of wine and watching crap tele, the evening disappears. But certain activities, practised with the intention of noticing, helps time expand: I light a candle, feel my feet walking the floor, make space for the movement practice that locates my living, breathing body exactly in time (even for 5 minutes), read a chapter of a novel, darn the same sock that I've been badly darning for 2 years, drink a herbal tea or a small glass of red wine (perfect for winter!) 

There is nothing prescriptive here - it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking we need to be inhabiting someone else's hashtag slow living Instagram reel, with the same natural earth tones and the same pot plants and the same sunlight falling on the wall. Whatever activity works for you is all that matters - whatever you enjoy, whatever calms you, whatever reminds you: here I am, with the leaves falling off the still, silent trees outside.

I know how much there is to fit into life, but I also know what it's like to overfill a life. May points out that having a baby is it's own kind of wintering, and to me motherhood sometimes feels like a shearing away - of parts of ourselves, things we want to do but cannot (the tension between "desire and capacity", as Dr Sophie Brock perfectly puts it).

Sometimes to protect my energy and sometimes because it becomes patently clear that I have no choice not to, I feel I am forever delaying and putting off and bailing on and postponing activity, on progress. It is often frustrating and dispiriting and even agonising at times, even though it's a practice that I feel right now I must be in service to. But as I let things drop, as I delegate or cancel or force myself to push something to the next day or the month after then the month after that, I feel lighter, and I know that to change, to make space for something new, we have to let go of something. I know I am not running out of time. I know that lots happens when it looks like not a lot is happening, just like in winter.

I bought a picture of the pagan wheel of the year to remind me of the comforting fact of season and repetition, of what comes around again. These set of eight solar events (solstices and equinoxes) and the midpoints between them have beautiful names - Samhain (pronounced sou-wen), Yule (winter solstice), Imbolc, Ostara (spring equinox), Beltane (May day), Litha (summer solstice), Lughnasadh (pronounced loo-nuh-sah), Mabon (autumn equinox). In Wintering May interviews a Druid who says simply “we have something to do every six weeks. It’s a useful period of time - you always have the next moment in sight. It creates a pattern through the year.”

I put the picture up on the wall in my bedroom, and every morning I look at it, and this simple act of knowing I'm somewhere that will come around again - an anchor that is bigger than me - has calmed me in ways I couldn't have foreseen. An internal voice mutters "it's four weeks until winter solstice" in the same way that next year, it will celebrate the longest day, the return of the light. It's a glorious redaction of the narrative of ambition that has reduced so much in me in recent years - or perhaps a celebration of a different kind of ambition: a slow burner, something that has meaning, something that celebrates small acts, small moments, the rebellious act of being here to experience, of being alive.