The winter blues and joys of life

It is not possible for a Bangladeshi to imagine how punishing it is to walk on a road with temperature dropped to 13 degrees Fahrenheit (which is minus 10.55 degrees centigrade) unless he or she has lived here in chilly winter. As I, a lone figure, was walking on the solitary walkway on my way to a nearby mall called 'Target', a 10-minute walk from my home, with all my warm clothes wrapped around my body and face, I suddenly thought I might not survive before I could reach my destination. My bones were aching and I felt my joints were getting stiff, as if the cartilages and the lubricants of my bone joints got frozen and solidified. I was shivering in the punishing cold. I was walking with a clumsy, hobbling gait. Somehow I managed to end my pedestrian odyssey to Target.
Unusually intense early season winter cold has attacked with little mercy the whole of the United States, especially the Midwest. The country is now a frozen nation.
The temperature is below freezing in almost all the states. Record-setting cold is sweeping everywhere, bringing heavy snow and dangerously bitter cold. More than 200 million people of America are encountering below-zero degree temperature. Treacherous slit-covered roads accompanied by winds, fogs and plummeting temperature have already caused deaths in different parts in a number of states.
Blistering cold air has been blasting across most of the country threatening some places with almost six feet of snow. This is part of a gargantuan Arctic weather driving south from Canada. This is the season to feel grumpy, a good recipe for mental depression.
The part that all people and I hate the most is whipping winds that drive the wind chills down as cold as the teens, meaning the temperature going down as low as between 13 and 19 degrees Fahrenheit.
For a Bangladeshi like me who has no work to do for a living in America - remaining home, looking out the window at the depressed weather, missing the pleasant and sunny winter back at home and occasionally smoking outside of the house in the bone-splitting cold under the grey and cloudy sky - the cruel weather is a sheer punishment.
In summertime I had pleasant daily stints when I used to spend most of my daytime at the local library. But now the very thought of walking all the way to the library and then coming back home in such a cold weather sends chills down my spine.
I feel depressed. I don't feel like reading or writing. Even listening to music does not melt my sad feelings away. They call it 'Seasonal Affective Disorder' (SAD), a type of depression that is tied to seasons. Most people with SAD in America are depressed only during the late fall and winter. Sometimes they also call it "winter blues".
The most comforting thing, however, for me to know is that I am not alone in such a depressed mood. Of course, one can find very few people in America who, like me, do not work for a living or have no outdoor activities.
Days are now shorter and many people I know get depressed from being in the dark longer. Most people in this period of season have to do a lot more unpleasant exercises just to go somewhere like putting on more clothes to keep warm, wiping snow off the car, starting the car to let it warm up, having to shovel the snow away from the car, etc.
But the pain is excruciating when you have nothing to do except idling away time like a couch potato, watching television, seeping tea or listening to music.
From time to time, we all get a little depressed. Then we try to blame the season or something else for our depressed mood.
Maybe we feel bad because we are not doing well with our goals. Maybe we don't know how to derive pleasures from whatever situation we are in. There could be many reasons for feeling down, and I am not qualified to discuss all the causes of depression, their implications, or their clinical treatments.
But there are ways, as my friends and relatives have always suggested, to get rid of such depression. But I hardly paid any heed to their advice.
The other day, one of my best friends, a white elderly American, had warned me that if I stayed home lying around and doing nothing I might head for a disaster. His simple and succinct advice to me was: "Brush your teeth, shave your face, take your shower, comb your hair, groom yourself up with warm clothes and just get out of the house." I followed his advice in toto and accordingly undertook my fateful journey to Target, braving the cold weather. My journey has revealed a confidence I was hitherto unaware of.
It was a cosy atmosphere I enjoyed inside the mall while I was window-shopping. I bought a coffee at the Starbucks and relished my hot drink sitting on a lounge bench inside the mall and was watching the frenetic activities of the shoppers and the salespeople. I was especially awe-struck when I found an elderly lady pushing a long train of not less than 10 carts inside the mall. She was collecting those carts from the open parking lot in such a chilly weather, wearing simply a jacket with no hood covering her head and pushing the train all the way inside the mall. I counted five trips of her pushing the trains of carts before I ventured out to smoke.
On the metal bench where I was smoking there was a young man smoking too. As I broached the topic of the inclement weather he was glad to start a conversation with me and I learned that he was working in the mall as a 'stocker', a job of shelving different produces in different departments. He works not only in Target. He works seven days a week for three different jobs at three different places. When I expressed my surprise at his strenuous jobs throughout the week he just laughed away his hectic workloads, saying that this is what the American way of life is all about. He has to pay his mortgages and bills; he has to build a future for his life. He does not want to just waste away his youth.
This young gentleman was doubly surprised when he came to know from me that I had not been working during my stay in America for the last few years. I tried to say I was pretty old, perhaps too old to do a job that might demand my physical labour.
In a shocking reply he termed me as a 'baby', saying: "Come on, baby. Here in America age does not count if you are not mentally aged." My mouth drooped and my jaw dropped in shock as he was narrating his sparkling philosophy of life with a youthful vigour. I felt so inferior to this energetic young man!
He literally dragged me inside the mall and asked me to apply for a job online inside a booth, then and there. This is the time a lot of seasonal jobs are offered by the mall.
I obliged and was then invited by the Human Resources Department of the mall for an interview. During the interview I told I was doing white-collar jobs back in Bangladesh before my retirement and wondered whether I would be able to do a job like that of a cashier or a stocker. Then, the interviewer, a mid-level manager, told his own story of how he climbed the ladder up from the position of a 'stocker' to his present level in a matter of months. He asked me to join his workforce as soon as possible, if their terms are acceptable to me. I don't know whether I would eventually start working or not. But the whole experience has revealed to me the true colours of life.
As I was returning home in the same frigid weather I was surprisingly not feeling cold at all. I was walking fast with assertive gaits. I became more poised and relaxed. I discovered a new confidence in my ability to succeed. The gloomy day rather helped me think more deeply and clearly.
The same mental haze that muddled my mind only a few hours back has now ignited my zeal to dig a deeper meaning of life. A new realisation has just dawned in my mind that a disconsolate weather that may at times hamper our mood may also make us derive joys even from a gloomy, chilly day.
We humans are biologically predisposed to avoid sadness, and we respond to sad moods by seeking opportunities for mood repair and vigilantly protecting ourselves against whatever might be making us sad.
Happiness blooms in our brain, that in fact sends a signal to our heart that everything is fine, that the environment doesn't pose an imminent threat to our pleasure, and that there's no need to brood - if only you have a good friend who orders you "Get dressed and just get out of the house" or a stranger (maybe a smoking partner) who would say "Come on, baby" and drag you inside a mall ordering you: "Just now apply for a job online".

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