Wintering

January musings, another trip around the sun, and contemplating loneliness.

They say January is the month of dreaming (Jean Hersey). For me, it’s the month of reflection. The invariable chaos of the last week of December gives way to calm and stillness in Jan. The new year feels like a new start — yet another attempt at life. 

January is my favourite month, when the light is plainest, least colors. And I like the feeling of beginnings.
- Anne Truitt

I gave up on ambitious new year resolutions a long time ago, but there is undeniable optimism and gusto in the early days of a new year. I can’t help but make checklists of small actions that I hope will become habits and compound over time. Drink more water. Exercise five days a week. Eat better. Journal. Meditate.  

© Ila Reddy

Winter in Delhi means struggling to get out of bed in the morning. The razai beckons at all times of the day and the three hours of dhoop are what I live for. Whenever I can, I go to a park whilst the sun is still out and catch a nap under the trees. I visit old monuments (the Mughal architecture especially comes alive this time of the year) and devour hot, soupy meals.

When the temperature dips to an all-time low, leaving me with little enthusiasm to do anything else but sleep, I try to find ways to stay alive (in spirit). I infuse my days with poetry, comfort food, conversations with friends, music, and long walks. They bring me warmth — and warmth hits different in the biting cold. 

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me an invincible summer.
- Albert Camus, The Stranger

Winter is also a training period for practicing stillness. I accept the days for what they are — slow, cold, gloomy — but with the faith and understanding that warmer days will come. I learn to appreciate the warmth of the winter sun and bask in the glory of the colorful winter blooms. Night walks — with the cold breeze brushing against my cheeks — are oddly comforting, making me feel alive even as all the exposed parts of my body turn numb. 

There’s a certain tenderness in the air that I cannot explain. It tells you that it’s ok to slow down; to preserve energy for brighter days. For now, surviving is enough.

“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

January also happens to be my birthday month and with it comes the urge to take stock of my journey so far. An opportunity to look back at the past year, reset myself, and stride forward with the hope of doing better. 

Happiness is a few pounds heavier.
It’s accepting being tired.
Being older. Being softer.
Being more reaching oak and less wildflower.
Happiness is taking days to bask in silence.
Not doing. Just being.
Happiness is no longer shrinking.
It’s releasing.
Guilt. Regret.
The weight of the past, and the fear of the future.
It’s discovering the joy in simplicity.
The beauty in the little things.
The power in the everyday.
— L.E. Bowman

In the first week of January, I went on a three-day vacation to Pondicherry with my cousin and six-year-old niece. One night, my niece bumped her head against the bed, resulting in a loud ‘thud’ sound. My cousin and I jolted up with concern and asked her if she was alright. Seeing our reaction, my confused niece - who wasn’t hurt - felt like something must be wrong and started crying. 

Being in your 30s as a single woman in India is somewhat like this. You’re going about your day feeling perfectly fine, even proud of how far you’ve come, only for the world to tell you - daily - that you’re incomplete because you’re not married. And because so many people are telling you so (explicitly and implicitly), you begin to wonder if there’s some truth to it.

Everyone needs a companion.

Your biological clock is ticking.

The older you get the harder it will be to find nice single men.

You went for a movie all by yourself?

Doesn’t it feel odd to travel alone?

When do you plan to ‘settle’?

These questions (and unsolicited opinions) are annoying but also amusing. All single women are acutely aware of their relationship status, thank you very much. They might be single out of choice or because they haven’t found the right person. Either way, it’s nobody else’s business. Choosing a life partner is no easy feat; it’s the most important decision one can make — and the most personal one. I wish there wasn’t so much pressure and anxiety around it.

As an introvert, solo traveler, and single woman, I often think about the fine line between solitude and loneliness. I oscillate between the two states when I’m traveling, but also when I’m home.

© Ila Reddy

I’ve realized that loneliness isn't about being alone. It’s more to do with feeling alone even when surrounded by people.

“You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people.”
— Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

As you grow older, old friends get busy with their respective partners and families. You may not be in the same city or phase of life anymore. You grow apart. Work schedules get in the way. They don’t love you any less, but they’re not always there when you need them. 

There are plenty of reasons why people feel lonely. Sometimes it’s because of the lack of a deeper connection. The physical presence of another person who gets you. At other times, it’s to do with the shame associated with being alone. 

“So much of the pain of loneliness is to do with concealment, with feeling compelled to hide vulnerability, to tuck ugliness away, to cover up scars as if they are literally repulsive. But why hide? What's so shameful about wanting, about desire, about having failed to achieve satisfaction, about experiencing unhappiness? Why this need to constantly inhabit peak states, or to be comfortably sealed inside a unit of two, turned inward from the world at large?”
― Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

But experiencing loneliness is also essential. It teaches you a lot about yourself, what you value, and what you need. It makes you softer, and when you do connect with another person, you treasure it. 

“I don't believe the cure for loneliness is meeting someone, not necessarily. I think it's about two things: learning how to befriend yourself and understanding that many of the things that seem to afflict us as individuals are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion, which can and should be resisted.”
― Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

One can feel lonely any time of the year, anywhere, and even within the ambit of a relationship. But I’ve found that there’s a lot that winter can teach us about coping with it. 

It starts with acceptance. 

“If happiness is a skill, then sadness is, too. Perhaps through all those years at school, or perhaps through other terrors, we are taught to ignore sadness, to stuff it down into our satchels and pretend it isn’t there. As adults, we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

By accepting the feeling of loneliness, we may attempt to understand where it’s stemming from, what it is telling us about ourselves and our needs, and how we can cope with it. 

There’s also much to learn from the cyclical nature of seasons. Loneliness is something we might experience several times in our lifetime — a state that isn’t permanent, but one that will return — so we might as well embrace it and understand it.

“When you start tuning in to winter, you realise that we live through a thousand winters in our lives — some big, some small… Some winters creep up on us so slowly that they have infiltrated every part of our lives before we truly feel them…. To get better at wintering, we need to address our very notion of time. We tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Winter may be a time for physical hibernation in many ways, but it can also be a time for inner work and healing. To look within and face our deepest fears and insecurities. To be kind and patient with ourselves — and prepare for the arrival of spring 🌸

We talk so much of light, please
let me speak on behalf

of the good dark. Let us
talk more of how dark

the beginning of a day is.

— Maggie Smith, How Dark the Beginning