On Being Cold

He would turn up in shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops and I would mentally pull my jumper, cardigan, scarf, coat and boots closer to myself, as if doubly insulating against the cold he clearly didn’t feel. His disregard for sub-10 degree temperatures unnerved me. We would joke about how it was the Northerner in him – despite the fact that he grew up in Leicestershire – and, anyway, he’d actually grown softer since migrating south because he could no longer don the same thin garbs when it was sub-zero. He needed a hoodie for that kind of cold. Recounting this still makes me shiver.

Despite my growing disconnectedness from the Motherland, I have long held on to one thing Nigeria baked into my bones: cold weather is a harsh mistress from a faraway land. 

I moved to that faraway land, the UK, when I was six years old and I don’t think I’d ever even owned a jacket (okay maybe one or two). I arrived in January in the middle of a disgusting and icy winter, and my grandfather sent me my first coat – a lovely red puffy one with a silver zip. I believe this was shortly after or before I’d seen snow for the first time in my life. My mother has never let me go cold since, and in return I have clung to those entwined feelings of warmth and being taken care of so tightly. Perhaps a little too tightly. 

My now-husband (still a cold-braving man, though he wears jeans instead of shorts now) brought me so many hitherto unexplored perspectives about how to live a full life when we were dating - and I don’t doubt he still has lots to teach me. One of the maxims he often repeats goes along the lines of: ‘sometimes it is good to be cold’. 

These days we are quick to cling to comfort and safety as if it has always been the default for all of us. Yet we all know that is nowhere near the truth. Far from being an ascetic, heaven-bent on starving myself of comfort just because others have never tasted it, I still think sometimes we do need to let the cold in. Let ourselves feel the bad things that the world must throw at us. And sometimes let ourselves be affected by it, feel shaken, chilled, or defeated by it even.

Comfort and warmth are not dangerous in and of themselves. But when they become our most prized and sought-after possessions in a self-serving world rife with inequality and injustice, they can be deadly. To us, to those who still suffer. Letting the cold bite at us every so often can be a way to truly wake ourselves up to everything that is outside of us, lest we continue to grown numb to it all beneath our layers. 

Every so often, when the temperature drops to uncomfortable depths, I implore you to go against your self-preserving instincts. Strip off the emotional & spiritual jumpers, the cardigans, scarves, coats and all, if not for empathy’s sake then at least for your own.