Bear vs. Squirrel: Winter's Balancing Act
Me, January 1: It’s a new year! It’s a clean slate! I can start fresh! I can get my life in order!
Also me, January 1: It’s dark all the time and cold most of the time. I have no energy. I want to sleep.
This is from an ITV ad for the show Dancing on Ice, and it’s actually the perfect representation of the balancing act! Check it out here: https://vimeo.com/302889225
In this case, the cliche of the struggle being real is accurate. Every January, my inner Bear, who wants to stay inside, breathe deep, and hibernate, clashes with my inner Squirrel, who wants to Do All the Things (and take a nap sometimes when my belly is satisfyingly full of nuts).
As I get older, the Bear is winning more often. I like to think that it’s because the Bear is really me. It’s my body naturally reacting to the longer nights, the colder weather. The Squirrel, on the other hand, only exists because someone, a long, long, long time ago, decided that our calendar resets on January 1. And diet, fitness, and daily planner marketers went CRAZY with that concept.
Guys, that person from long, long ago could’ve just as easily decided that April 1 was the start of the new year. Oh wait — it was. Until a Pope named Greg decided in 1582 that January 1 should be the start of the new year, April 1 was the first day of the year. Now that actually makes sense. Spring has sprung, birds are chirping, the sun’s starting to shine again. That’s the ideal time to make yourself over and start fresh — because it’s when nature does it, too.
But no — that damn Squirrel tells us to do all of this work and enact all of this change at the exact same time that our bodies are telling us to slow down and take it easy.
Source: Cathy Holewinski / @cholewinski / https://unsplash.com/photos/vJHM1qoTqnA
It’s a balancing act. We live in a world in which these two truths occur at the same time. Here’s how I’ve reconciled the dueling mammals within:
Listening to my body. Some days, I feel like I could run a marathon. Okay, zero days do I feel like that. But I definitely have high-energy days and low-energy days. Instead of trying to force my energy somewhere it doesn’t want to go, I try to go along with it. I see it as a little gift to my body. (It’s the least I can do; it takes a lot of abuse from me.)
Tuning out the noise. You know how squirrels can get really chatty and chirpy? Well the New Year’s Squirrel is really loud, and distracting, and demanding. Everywhere you look, it’s “Buy this new fitness equipment!” and “This diet will change your life!” I turn it off and tune it out. I have enough Squirrel in me without you adding to it, Ms. Instagram.
Going with the flow. This is sort of related to #1 — listening to my body. I’ve noticed a sort of rhythm to the seasons. In the winter and spring, I like to read non-fiction books and listen to motivational podcasts. My physical world becomes smaller as I cozy up in my tiny condo, but my mind expands with new ideas and strengthens by reinforcing what I’ve learned over the years. In the summer and fall, it’s fantasy and fun time: fiction, travel … go, go, go. It ebbs and flows, and it’s all okay.
Being kind to myself. This is probably the hardest thing — because it’s a year-round struggle for me. Some days, I’m doing my best to listen to my body (#1), but then some of that Squirrel-chirp gets through (anti-#2) and I feel guilty. Like I’m not doing enough, I’m not planning enough, I’m not … enough. In those moments, I am working to stop the thought process and talk to myself like I’d talk to a friend who was going through a rough time: “You’re amazing and you’re doing the best you can and that is inherently enough.”
Source: Hans Jurgen-Mager / @hansjurgen007 / https://unsplash.com/photos/p2xEnIZAv1E
Aside from the Bear and the Squirrel, I also like to think of these cold, dark winter months as a sort of chrysalis time — it’s the best analogy I can think of that combines the turning inward of the Bear and the energized optimism of the Squirrel. A caterpillar builds a chrysalis, does only God knows what inside of it for some period of time, and emerges, transformed into a butterfly.
At this point, my Bear is yelling, “Geez, Elizabeth. That’s a lot of pressure. You want to be a freakin’ butterfly by April 1?”
No, no, little Bear. Don’t fret. The chrysalis is inside my mind. We can be in it even as we’re hibernating. Now let’s go settle in.
Elizabeth Brunetti is a silver linings expert and recovering scaredy-cat. When she’s not talking FRIENDS, she likes to write about things like food, body love, and pretty much anything else her polymathic tendencies lead her toward on her blog, Take On E.