Climate Change

I am intensely experiencing climate change today. Not that kind of climate change--the kind where temperate Washington is hammered with a brutal 4-month icy, snowy, cold winter and my former rainy home in Oregon is experiencing drought and forest fires in what is normally the rainy season--although the kind I write about today is related.

I've spent the last two weeks indoors, mostly in darkened rooms, recovering from eye surgery. Yet even in that environment, I've experienced my own personal climate change. My retina has been liberated from film and fluid that have darkened my world for almost two years. Even in dark rooms, I have felt like I have burst from an all-twilight life boldly into sunny high noon...24x7.

I've always been someone who needs light, but I didn't fully understand the impact until this week. I not only see better, but I feel lighter and brighter emotionally too.

Climate change worked it's way into my life in another way today. Just five days ago wind-chill temperatures were zero. Even though I was out very little, I could judge the temperature by how hard my heating system worked to keep my normally toasty apartment a little chilly.

Like a miracle, today temperatures have broken into the 60s (16-17 C). Street musicians once again serenade walkers and runners on the sidewalks. Attired in shorts and skorts, tennis players flocked to the University courts near my home. Undaunted by many remaining piles of snow up to three-feet high, I spotted several 80-and 90-somethings walking with their push-carts to run errands, and one  elderly women, who had walked to a bench with her walker, stopped me to chat.

Like them, I feel lighter, too. I lost 10 pounds today! Layers of turtlenecks, sweaters, our heaviest coats, boots, hats, earmuffs, and scarves finally shed in a day after months of being one with us.

We have many kinds of climate in our lives. While the reality of global climate change cannot be denied, many of them are influenced by our minds and hormones. The reality of the change I feel in my brighter world cannot be denied. Nor can the uplift of spirit in shedding that 10 pounds of winter attire to walk in the warmth of early spring sunshine. It's enough to make me jump for joy...and that, too, can be a climate change.

Harvard researcher Amy Cuddy has researched the victory stance. You know it: arms extended upward with chin up and head back, just as an athlete crosses a finish line. She says that when we take that position, our bodies release hormones associated with winning, without doing anything else! If we want to be winners, all we have to do is take the stance, and we change to the inner climate of a winner. (If you haven't watched her TED talk, it should be must-viewing for life.*)

So today I am going to jump for joy, change my inner climate to match the outer climate...and head to my balcony to get ready for the inevitability of those first crocus sprouts, which will pop through the soil any day now. Yes!

*Link to Amy Cuddy's TED talk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc


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