Why I lean into cold...

A case for discipline.

“The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our mind.” - Thomas Merton, 2009.

I like the idea of discipline, specifically self-discipline. And not to be confused with punishment. I don’t believe in self-punishment. I’m talking more about doing things that are challenging, even when the value is delayed and without gratification. Discipline in this sense is building a foundation for one’s life by laying brick after brick around the perimeter of the house that is you. I seek challenges and go for it. I lean into the edge. I lean into a little pain. I like to feel the nerves that make me human. We are evolved for this. We aren’t made to sit quietly and comfortably in a chair all day. That is not what humans are made to do. We can do it a bit. But if that is all we do, we are going to start falling apart. For many of us, our work day requires some over-comfort… ie, indoors, sitting, warm, and a little numb. So it is outside those hours that we need to push.

I start my day with this push. After waking, sometimes just after a coffee, sometimes before, I ride my bike about half mile up the valley to go swim in the creek. I’ve done this now for over three years. Rain. Shine. Snow. Sub-zero. Sunshine. All year. Every day. Sick. Busy. Doesn’t matter. I get up, and go. Usually I take Acre with me, though every once in a while he is too comfortable by the fire to join. I go regardless.

Once there I strip down and jump in. In the coldest part of winter I have to use a hatchet in my mittened hands and break out a hole large enough to sit down into. On those coldest of days when it’s below 10 F or so, I’ll leave on a pair of wool socks because somehow that little layer seems to preserve my toes, which are still a little sensitive from a frostbite I had thirty years ago in Yellowstone NP on a -25F day.

At first I did it for the challenge. I wanted to see if I could. After a full winter of doing it, realizing I not only liked the challenge, but I loved the effect, I’ve built it into my routine, habit, and daily discipline. The cold helps clear the mind, and body, of any unnecessary rubbish. These little things are what help build us.

There are others I do. I write when I wake up. This goes with my first coffee, so sometimes before I swim, sometimes after. But always before I check my phone. The phone is an invitation to the outside world, random strangers, letting them come in and introduce their ideas, their hopes, their desired interactions, goals, and wants for how I might affect their day. So I don’t check it until I’ve had a least a half hour, ideally even a little longer, to just let my own mind think for a bit, clear itself from sleep, set it’s own intention, and find it’s pace for the day. I like to know what I’m working on for my own work, for my own day, for my own goals, small and big before letting others influence where my mind goes. This is a challenging thing to do, but something, like swimming in very cold water, that I’ve learned to love, even when it feels like work, even when looking at Instagram feels nice and easy.

Reading. I do this at some point. A book. Not a screen. I read plenty on a screen, and there is valuable reading to be done on screens, but there is something about the page, a non-flickering, non-diode related page in which my mind can sit easy, calmly, can turn pages back to see a sentence that has a particular impact, creates a particular spark, and I’ve never found screen reading to be as potent in this regard. So every day, at some point, I make sure I pick up a book to read. In a book I find a quiet that I don’t find elsewhere. In a book I find a solace that is akin to walking in the woods. I’ve never found this on a digital device in the same way…

Walking. This is the other thing I won’t do without in a day. Sometimes it is in the form of running which I also hold of considerable value, but in one form or the other I can not, will not allow myself to not take at least a couple miles on my feet. This more than anything else I know brings its value to the immediate forefront the moment you start. With feet in motion, moving though open air, the mind find itself. Everything starts to fall in place. Ideas. Goals. Quiet. And the realizations that go hand in hand with life. So if somehow the day has gotten away from me, or even if it hasn’t, and it’s late and I’ve not walked somewhere… Shoes and coat on, usually camera in hand, I’ll set out for a walk.

Discipline has been interrupted by many as a negative. I don’t see it as such. Having been raised in the books of Thomas Merton and C.S. Lewis, I came at an early age in finding value in pushing past the mere comforts in life, mentally and physically. True value in life is not found in comfort, and is often most revealed with discomfort. So this is a direction I lean into.

“Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny,” said C.S Lewis. I feel like discipline is practice for these inevitable hardships in life.