Seasons in flux

Sunday - beautiful. Monday - perfection. Now - dismality returns (+3C when at the same time yesterday evening it was +15C). To what extent are our moods - even for those of us who can claim to be emotionally stable - determined by the changing seasons? Well, I must say I had my mood gloriously lifted by the sunlight and warmth that's bringing nature back to life. Just as dwindling daylight lowers my spirits.

And so a thank-you to Ewa from Kraków (who runs Leopolis, supplier of fineft Englifh cheefef) for sending me this link to a Guardian article about the emotional calendar. Oliver Burkeman writes about a new book on this subject by Harvard psychiatrist John Sharp. He argues that changing seasons lead to changes in one's emotional state:

These seasonal emotional shifts – the fillip from the first identifiably warm spring breeze, say, or the sinking feeling induced by shortening late-summer evenings – are such a fixture in our lives that they can become near-invisible. We're slow to attribute our feelings to them, and even psychologists haven't studied them much...

It's an idea I can instantly relate to. Despite modern life, electricity, television and diverse other forms of entertainment doing their best to iron out differences between midwinter and high summer, the constantly changing seasons have a profound effect on the way I feel within myself (that wonderfully useful Polish word samopoczucie). For example, trying to fast in the run-up to midwinter rather than doing in early spring would be terrifyingly difficult, especially giving up drink, a useful tonic when days are short and cold and dark and dismal.

And as I noted last November and in January, the incidence of suicides increases when daylight is in short supply.

To cope with this effect, it's important simply to be aware of it and not to dismiss it as pseudoscientific hokum. Go with the flow, learn to live with the seasons' ebb and flow.

This time last year:
Stunning late-winter beauty

This time two years ago:
Jeziorki Gumbo

This time three years ago:
Digging up Dawidowska