{"id":77344,"date":"2026-01-25T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T07:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=77344"},"modified":"2026-01-24T16:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T23:53:08","slug":"cold-comfort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/cold-comfort\/","title":{"rendered":"Cold comfort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Cold<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I stayed in an Airbnb recently and encountered the usual dysphoria one feels when occupying strangers\u2019 homes: How can it be so difficult to unlock a front door, where are the lights, should I have taken my shoes off before running to the restroom, and, for me, the most perplexing, why is it so cold in here, and how on earth do I manipulate this weird thermostat?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regulating one\u2019s temperature this time of year is, in much of the Northern Hemisphere, a fundamental challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O, to truly understand the sneaky calculus that determines \u201creal feel\u201d \u2014 the weather app said 40s, but I didn\u2019t count on the wind! Layers, you tell yourself before leaving the house, but how many can one reasonably layer under a down parka before locomotion becomes impossible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw a headline from T Magazine and clicked eagerly, hoping it would solve things: \u201cHow to Stay Warm This Winter,\u201d a list of luxurious accessories that promise to make things tolerable now that \u201cwe\u2019ve reached the part of winter where it\u2019s just you versus the elements.\u201d I don\u2019t know that I can justify cashmere earmuffs this year, but maybe over-the-knee socks?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One solution, I\u2019m told, is to become a tea person (the Brits just call this \u201ca person\u201d). Tea people, like sauna people, understand that warming oneself is not a layering challenge, but a cellular one. You could armor yourself with sealskin mittens and a down coat indistinguishable from a mountaineer\u2019s sleeping bag, or you could mainline hot liquids and alter your temperature from the inside out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tea people always have a mug going, a thermos at hand for refills. They carry out their all-day-long, all-day-strong warming ritual in the background, without the fanfare of coffee drinkers with their single-serving special orders. If they\u2019re queried about their tea habits, they may, to the tea-ignorant, come off as a tad smug, like people with established yoga practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember the late-2010s craze for \u201chygge,\u201d the Danish concept of coziness and comfortable well-being? The Scandinavians, the rest of the world realized, might know a thing or two about optimizing for winter. They know from long, dark seasons, but still rank as the happiest people on the planet. Kari Leibowitz, a psychologist who moved north of the Arctic Circle to study how people thrive there during winter, wrote in The Times in 2020 that the secret is a \u201cpositive wintertime mind-set.\u201d It\u2019s possible, she found, to cultivate this, even if you\u2019ve always associated the season with dread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mind-set shift involves changing what you notice, what you remark upon, where you place your focus. Leibowitz advises concentrating on what you like about winter (cooking, cozy indoor reading, the quiet after snowfall) over what you don\u2019t (don\u2019t get me started). \u201cAppoint yourself a wintertime ambassador this year,\u201d she advised, \u201cand encourage everyone around you to notice what they like about the winter as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I imagine this self-designation might read as irritating to one\u2019s shivering friends and family who would prefer to partake in the time-honored January tradition of complaining about the weather, but I\u2019m already the unofficial publicist for summer, so maybe a new seasonal enthusiasm would read as refreshing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leibowitz also advises people to get outside, to figure out the layering situation such that experiencing the Norwegian concept of \u201cfriluftsliv,\u201d or \u201copen air life,\u201d isn\u2019t excruciating. The Swedish author of \u201cThere\u2019s No Such Thing as Bad Weather\u201d (I think that sentence usually completes with \u201conly bad clothes\u201d) told Leibowitz, \u201cThere are some days when it\u2019s harder to get outside than others, but I know that if I do, I\u2019m never going to regret going outside.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah! That penetrates, doesn\u2019t it? You\u2019re never going to regret going outside. This is the sort of mantra that works on me. Every fiber of my being may disagree with it, but if I allow my brain to override the resistance, if I believe intellectually that it\u2019s true, I\u2019ll go out in the cold and quite possibly discover the physical and mental benefits of \u201coutdoorphins.\u201d If I can take a break from my usual winter pastimes of turning up the thermostat when no one is looking and making others touch and offer sympathy for my corpse-cold extremities, there\u2019s a different relationship with winter awaiting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re never going to regret going outside. No regrets, only possibility. You don\u2019t have to make snow angels or take up cold-water swimming \u2014 just get your good clothes on and get out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n