The past few weeks have been lovely. Really, they have.
An overnight snowstorm (well, by Durham standards), ice-covered stairs to the LSRC, torrents of rainy wind (windy rain?) and—for the few of us lucky enough to live in Kilgo or Keohane quadrangles—a morning without the often-overlooked luxuries of heat or hot water.
February is the cruelest month, breeding sinus infections out of cruddy weather, mixing midterms and election snafus, stirring dull minds with winter sludge.
If you’ve been feeling particularly down-trodden this calendar year, if your lecture classes have proven particularly soporific, if you just can’t muster the joie de vivre that came so naturally a long time ago, in an epoch far, far away (called Fall semester), look no farther than the blast of cold air that hit your already-wind-chapped face as you struggled to push your way out of the Social Sciences building.
Or maybe look no farther than the last time you bit your lower lip and stood shivering at the West Campus bus stop as an instantaneous deluge achieved really flattering things with your hair. Remember resolving to yourself that you would never again be caught outside without an umbrella? Yeah, that was a lie.
Truth is, perhaps we’re all a little under the weather. Maybe freezing temperatures have robbed us of more than just a few extra nights spent in K-ville. Maybe they’ve carried off an essential energy in us, drained us of our get-up-and-go and left us lethargically hitting snooze and drooling all over our econ textbooks.
If this is the case, I’m not surprised—and you shouldn’t be either. According to an article recently published in The New York Times, research again and again shows that our mental states are much more in tune with our physical conditions than even Zen masters thought possible.
For instance, a study at Yale University reveals that our perception of a stranger’s personality is drastically affected by the temperature of the cup of coffee we happen to be holding in our hands. If it’s iced coffee, he’s more likely to leave us cold—we might give him a frosty reception or maybe even the cold shoulder. On the other hand, if we’re cupping a mug of steaming coffee, we’ll probably really warm up to him, and things might heat up later on.
Other experiments demonstrate the literal weight of important subject matter, the forward momentum of the future and the tangible griminess of a moral transgression. That is, we think books on significant topics are heavier than books of lesser impact, we actually lean forward when thinking about our future plans and we are more likely to want a cleaning cloth after we’ve talked about a mistake we’ve made.
It’s surprising and yet not at the same time. For years, we’ve been taught the utility of figurative language in writing classes. We learned to mix literal thinking with metaphorical flair, to make associations between abstract and tangible concepts. To me, though, all this seemed like an academic or rhetorical exercise, not one hard-wired into our instinctive perceptions of the world.
Who knew the (now long-defunct) analogies section of the SAT was supposed to come so naturally?
In some ways, literal metaphors (or embodied cognition, the field under which the aforementioned experiments fall) make common sense. As recent TED Talks speaker James Geary said, metaphorical thinking is “essential to how we understand ourselves and others—how we communicate, learn, discover and invent.” We rely on associations for information-processing and innovation, for pattern recognition and the formation of expectations.
People with perceptual synesthesia experience a mixing of their senses so that letters have colors and sounds have shapes. As cognitive synesthetes, we all use disparate sources to understand the context in which we find ourselves. Our bodies are no minor resource in our quest for comprehension—the boundary between mental and physical, figurative and literal, abstract and tangible is much more tenuous than it appears.
It’s no wonder, then, that crappy weather leaves us crappy-feeling. External cues greatly affect our internal moods. There’s even a term for it: seasonal affective disorder (but we don’t need medical diagnoses to tell us something we already know).
So what do we do now that we know the cruel, cruel ways of February? Do we give up, trudge through more muddy puddles on Main West Quad, accept the sting of winter as a psychological danger we must endure?
No. We take advantage of this newfound wisdom and apply it in a proactive manner, in a way that our educational forefathers would applaud for its practicality and resourcefulness:
Fellow Duke community members, I’ll be seeing you in Cancun.
Shining Li is Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every Tuesday.
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