Hurts So Good 2 comments

By Jessica Mesman Griffith

I took a walk in the freezing rain tonight. I’d spent the entire day inside with my four year old. When Dave got home we were still in our pajamas. Well, I was in my pajamas, and she was in her pajama top and rain boots, and I was actively searching for the bottoms while yelling at her about dumping an entire bag of sugar on whatever she’d been “cooking” while I was preparing dinner.

I was desperate for air and determined to walk the path through the woods behind our house, as I’ve meant to do every day since recovering from surgery. By the time I got my clothes on, the predicted wintry mix had begun to fall. I grabbed the umbrella from our porch and pressed on.

My route took me past the stables and through the woods, down a gravel path and onto the campus of the college. It’s a popular trail, but tonight, I didn’t pass any other walkers. The stable shuttle stopped twice to ask me if I needed a ride, and I waved them on.

There was something wonderful about being alone out there, filling my lungs with the cold, seeing the landscape as I normally wouldn’t, hearing the rain in the trees and the water rushing in the ditches. I also felt a weird rush of what I can only describe as moral superiority, as if I was somehow a better person for walking in freezing rain rather than lying on the sofa near our space heater.

Earlier I’d read a story in the New York Times identifying a new fad among crunchy bohemian types—turning off the heat in the winter. The ridiculous notion that living without heat could be fashionable immediately brought to mind the “Derelicte” campaign in Zoolander, which nailed the fashion industry for making homelessness chic (for a recent example, see the cover of the November 2009 issue of W Magazine, which features a panhandling Linda Evangelista. Inside, models wear couture shopping bags and newspapers).

In fact, most of the people interviewed for the Times story—featured in the Home and Garden section—were motivated by pure lack of finances, even if they do make freezing look really hip. It’s a problem of resource allocation: personal comfort is optional; living in that awesome loft space with its own stage, not so much.

Others featured in the story are acting out of concern for the environment in addition to their personal resources. Still others are convinced that there are physical and psychological benefits to this deprivation—though the article points out that this is unsupported by science. (Apparently there are health benefits to heat training, but not cold.)

Still, I wonder if they all, for different reasons, feel just the slightest bit superior at the end of the day, when they pull on their wool hats and fingerless gloves and turn into their 35 degree bedrooms. In addition to saving money and the earth, looking boho, and gaining confidence in one’s personal stamina, I’m willing to bet there is a distinctly moral reward, something like that flash of superiority I felt when the shuttle driver shook her head at me and drove away into the freezing rain.

I don’t even mean that I felt superior to someone else—certainly not the shuttle driver, who was doing her job. This was an internal victory over the version of me who would have, on another day, accepted her offer and gotten out of the rain.

Maybe moral isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s a spiritual reward. The story quotes Winifred Gallagher, who makes annual freezing pilgrimages to a one-room schoolhouse with no running water:

“The main reason why I do these winter trips,” she said, “is that when your house is 15 degrees, the only problem you have is getting warm. Focusing on survival is right up there with a Zen retreat when it comes to clearing the mind.”

There is real spiritual value in mortifying the flesh—at least my religious tradition says so. Admittedly, I grew up around New Orleans so I’ve always been more of a feaster than a faster, more Easter Sunday than Good Friday, and so my own personal experience is limited.

Taking that cold walk, I thought about how easy it is to mock what one person sees as a challenge or sacrifice—twenty-something artists who choose to live in $3,000 lofts they can’t afford to heat; the guy I know who gave up M&Ms—make that peanut M&Ms—until Roe vs. Wade is overturned.

It looks like, given the state of the economy, many of us are becoming more willing try our hand at deprivation in some form. Maybe we even have a moral obligation to retrain ourselves to live at a lower standard of comfort than what we’ve been used to. Will I, counterintuitively, feel increased if I do?