We are coming into a time of bitter coldness this week. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, provides some tips on how to survive it.
Sometimes you can just take words for what they are. Other times they have more than one meaning. You can decide for yourself about the ones that follow.
We are headed into the worst of a hard-hearted winter. It feels like it might last for years.
It’s brutal enough that many will suffer and some might die. The worst part, for most of us, will be the relentless chill. Day after day. It’ll creep its way in before we can even get coffee in the morning, and it will haunt our uneasy dreams.
On some days, the cold will feel so deep and pervasive that we might think this is the end of the world we used to know, and the beginning of a new one, a kingdom of ice.
We can try to ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist, close ourselves off from the outside world and crank the thermostat as much as we can. But there is always a space under the door, a crack in the windowsill. It always gets in. You can’t truly escape it.
So what do we do to stay warm?
You ever hear of that band Three Dog Night, from back in the ‘70s? They got their name from Australian hunters who measured how cold the night was by how many dogs they needed to huddle up with. So stick with your dogs, and your people, too. Find your tribe and hold it close.
Take care of yourself, too. Don’t piddle away the day doomscrolling about how bad it’s going to get. Do the things that make you happy. Joy is always present, even in the coldest times.
Of course, heat matters. But sometimes, in a moment like this, we overdo it — throw every log on the fire, down every shot in the bottle. We can burn so hot that we burn ourselves out and our sweat turns to shivers. Better to burn with a low but steady flame.
And remember that the best kind of heat is the kind that also produces light. Heat keeps us going. But light shows us where to go and how to get there. We have to keep our lamps lit. We can’t give in to the darkness.
This winter might feel like forever. But one morning you will look outside and see a daffodil poking up through the icy crust, or a robin skipping across the yard, looking for breakfast. The world rolls and spins through its eternal cycles, with no regard for us, and soon enough it will grant us warm spring days, whether we have earned them or not.
Our kind have made it through colder days. We still make art, make love and make a living. We will talk about these times one day, and probably not fondly. But we will talk, having made it through. Together.
Tommy Tomlinson’s On My Mind column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.
