Standing in Cold Water: A Handful of Practices for Feeling Alive Again

Hope is not a soft bed, a place to lie down and rest indefinitely. Hope is a form of inertia, an animating force, found where mind and spirit align with a vision in the world, and, ideally, become embodied through good work. It doesn’t come passively.

I found myself needing to nurture hope after reading some difficult writings on current affairs. One focused on the scarcity of certain metals and minerals deemed necessary for forms of energy transition, while the other was about the supposed low levels of plankton in the Atlantic ocean. Neither of the pieces were day brighteners. I don’t vouch for either of them — here’s a rebuttal of sorts to the second. Simply spending time with them affected me.

At that point, I had been living in a stretch of gray, with a lot of commotion in my head, most of it unhelpful. Because of this, I decided to slightly alter my morning routine, which tends to consist of waking and diving into a mental and physical task list. I happened to have a relatively open morning, so I woke early and aimed for inefficiency. To be clear, this is the opposite of how I normally do things. My first thought upon waking tends to be — “Okay, what needs to be done?” That morning when I woke, I asked that question, let all of the things come to mind and then forced myself to let them go.

Then I sat. In silence. I made some coffee. I listened to some music, drank some water, stepped into the shower (cold water), hopped out, breathed warm dry air and repeated the process for about an hour and a half.

Silence, coffee, music, a drink of water, showering in cold water, breathing warm dry air. Repeat.

Silence.

A drink of coffee, while listening to music.

A drink of water.

Cold shower.

Breathe.

Repeat.

And it helped.

It was all pleasant. Well, no — the cold shower wasn’t. Two things happened as I stepped into the frigid water. First, my pulse quickened and my body tensed as the breath was sucked from my lungs. I held the posture and quickly exhaled, sporadically and involuntarily. Between the quick flicks of breath, I sensed alertness — the sensation of being fully alive. With my body still chilled, my mind had shifted. What was jumbled and cloudy before was now tidy and sharp. I then settled into what felt like the right way to approach a day — an experience of reset and refreshment that didn’t have to be abstracted and processed mentally.

That morning routine’s benefits may not apply in the same way or be realistic for other people. It might not even apply to me in the midst of different circumstances, say six-months down the road. I took a minute to reflect on some other practices or instances that can be uncomfortable, but hope-nurturing.

An honest disagreement with someone who’s looking out for your own good.

It’s nice to find yourself in agreement with others. It makes for easy conversation. Disagreeing with someone, but maintaining relationship and respect, while conversing, is more difficult. The difficulty doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth it. Maintaining dialogue amongst disagreement requires listening and vulnerability, but orients you towards a world in which affirmation of yourself and your understandings is not the primary purpose of speech. This posture allows for learning and growing with others. For me, the difficulty generally involves voicing initial dissent. For others, bringing up disagreements might come easily, but doing so respectfully is the rub. Whatever the case, being able to disagree well allieves an interpersonal pressure to feign agreement when it isn’t there. It also counteracts the modern socio-technological temptation to forego conversations with those around us and try to replace them artificially with curated online communities of persons who view the world as we do.

Be aware, though, that this sort of conversation is generally helpful to the same extent that there’s a knowing relationship between both parties, and mutual care. Honest disagreements on issues of depth with strangers can be constructive, but often fall apart into distancing diatribes where words spoken tend to travel over heads rather than through minds.

Sticking with something.

This might be a practice, and it might be a place. It might be both. Majora Carter’s book, Reclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move Out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better One, is on my bookshelf. Sticking to practices and places shows commitment beyond one’s self, just as fostering conversations that involve disagreeing well. Ironically, the patience and persistence required often bring us full-circle to something we seek or enjoy. But sometimes they don’t. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. That struggle is sometimes what enlivens us, even more than the end goal.

“Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.”

(W.B., Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front)

Giving up a distraction

The Pomodoro Technique is a method used to facilitate uninterrupted sessions of focus and work for twenty-five minutes of time. The idea is that the twenty-five minute length should be considered relatively manageable, yet allows for more to get done than you might expect. From there, the manageable length and repeated results combine to lead to a healthy workflow. There are things that keep me distracted from the task at hand, whether the task is enjoying an evening or getting work done. There’s a reason that I cling to those distractions, but if I can find a way to do the difficult work of giving them up, I often find the benefits to outpace my expectations.

Taking a Break (from something you depend on)

I’m a coffee drinker. I drink less than you might expect from someone with what amounts to a constant unlimited supply, but I do enjoy a mug every morning. Sometimes I notice that my enjoyment of the coffee itself dissipates, and the practice serves more as an uninspired wake-me-up. I chalk this lack of enjoyment up to dependency on a mind-altering substance (if the coffee that I’m brewing hasn’t changed). My brain has adapted to the stimulation, and it’s time to give it up briefly. A morning without is usually enough to reset. Suddenly, coffee rightly reverts to its place as something special to look forward to. It’s a hint of inspiration and beauty — not just a tired utilitarian routine.

Bonus: If you’re trying out these practices, or any others, here are two considerations in the form of permaculture principles to be carried alongside:

1.) Small and slow solutions.

Aim for small changes, practices and commitments when getting started, and be patient. Slow and steady.

2.) Obtain a yield.

Make sure that there’s a benefit to what you’re doing at some point. It doesn’t have to be material, or anything instantly gratifying, but ensuring that you’re celebrating something at some point is an antidote to getting bogged down.

I’d love to hear about practices that come to mind for you. How do you clear your head and make room for what’s animating and living?