Frozen and Starving – What I Learned in Deprivation

Growing up one of the things I liked least in this world was the cold.  So much so that the only thing I asked God for before serving a mission was to not be sent somewhere cold.  I was sent to West Africa along the equator, so that worked out for me which I was really grateful for.

Living in Chicago, most people seem to agree the long and cold winters are by far the biggest downside.  The city is wonderful outside of this, but this was a big deal for me – I really hated the cold.  I decided that if I was going to live here that I wanted to turn this around and somehow find a way to use the cold to my advantage. 

Cold Training and Long Water Fasting

In my search I came across a crazy Dutch guy named Wim Hof, “The Iceman”, and got inspired. So, for the past 3 winters in Chicago I have been training my body to adapt to some of the deepest colds I’ve ever experienced by never wearing any winter clothing when I go out, going through periods of taking only cold showers, and occasionally practicing breathing techniques.  If you want to check what Wim Hof is all about, this is a good introduction here and here.  My co-workers enjoy questioning me through the cold winters since from an outside perspective it looks a bit crazy walking in from a blizzard without a coat, hat, or gloves (and sometimes it does feel a bit crazy).

In a similar vein, two years ago I felt an intuitive push to go through periods of long water fasting – which means going extended periods without eating food and only drinking water.  I researched it very heavily before trying it, but since that time have done many fasts for periods as little as 3 days to as high as 14 days.  It’s roughly between day 3-5 that the body transitions into starvation, and the experience of it is not at all what I imagined. 

In both cases, cold training and long-water fasting, I didn’t quite understand why I felt the drive to do something that seemed so extreme on the one hand, but I felt intimations that it was something I should do, something that I would learn from, something that would help me.  What was driving me to do this?

Climbing a Mountain

A couple weeks ago I was climbing a mountain which was unexpectedly hit by a snowstorm previous to arriving, and also on the return portion of our climb we were hit by some more unexpected snow.  My friend was starting to freeze on the way up and so eventually took the 2 jackets we had brought. I was able to climb the steep mountain in running shoes, soccer sweats, and a short-sleeve t-shirt while being knee deep in snow and grabbing the snow with my bare hands and arms in order to both climb and eventually descend.

What was amazing about it, is that I felt perfectly comfortable doing it. My training these past few years was paying off, my body had adapted to what before I didn’t think was possible.  This experience gave me a moment to reflect. I’ve frozen myself and starved myself.  What have I learned?  Has there been something more to it than madness? 

The truth is I have learned many important lessons and reaped many health benefits, and sometime I might want to delve into those in more detail, but I have concluded the most significant lesson has been this – that within opposition there is life, and furthermore that outside of this there is no life to be found.

Inexorability of Suffering

What do I mean?  It’s a difficult but interesting problem – that life is largely about overcoming suffering, and yet almost contradictory without suffering there could be no life.  For it is in the suffering and in the opposite that the truth can manifest itself, and the truth cannot be manifested save in the foreground of that which is not truth.

This is why Jesus said, “The poor shall always be with you.”  And not the poor only, but limitation, suffering, and evil will always be with us.  And perhaps surprisingly – that is a good thing.  Life is therefore not about the eradication of suffering, but instead the transcendence of suffering, the ability to live among the times and seasons of evil and to choose to manifest truth and love among it. 

It means that happiness in the pleasure and fleeting sense, cannot be the objective – for there is no life in it alone.  Rather true happiness embodies all true emotions – a time for sadness, a time for pain, for anger, for heartache.  One of the great secrets of true joy is not to imagine that “positive” emotion is your purpose in life.  Life is built of the full and wide range of all true emotions – and when there is true sadness – not merely indulgent sadness – the appropriate response is to embrace and live among the pain.  For it is this kind of pain that allows for life, love, and truth to exist at all.  Our seasons of sorrows make way for the summers of light and joy, and even in the winters of life there is something of beauty to be found. 

Sitting with and embracing the cold and hunger, I found life, and if you sit with the cold and broken parts of your life and embrace them rather than run from and count them as a curse, you too will see life, you will see your ability to adapt, and not only adapt but ultimately transcend the cold, not by eradicating it but truly sitting with and embracing it – pain and all.

Darkness and the Morning Light

Do not let a society or person make you feel bad about your sadness when it is the proper time and season for it, for sadness is a reminder of our eternal value, and that seasons await us greater than the pain we now endure.  Do not let a society or person make you feel bad about your anger if you are not misusing it to hide from the truth, for when properly felt it is a reminder of the eternal justice we deserve as beings of light and love, and provides motivation to keep moving forward – for we shall have eternal justice. 

No, the truth is life is full of depravity, malevolence, and travesty.  I will never ask you to pretend those away.  Instead I will sit with you, and be with you in your pain, in your sorrows, fears, and sadness, and perhaps you would be willing to be with me in mine. Because the truth is it’s okay to be sad, tired, cold, angry, starving, lonely, and longing, because these are essential elements of the complete truth that is life.  By rejecting these experiences, we reject life itself, for one side of a coin cannot exist without the other. Whereas embracing it, you will discover how resilient you truly are, and how you can live in the darkness – and even strangely feel comfortable while doing it. And then how much sweeter the morning light will be, while those who have slept through the darkness will never be able to appreciate the beauty of the sunrise as you do.

Being in the darkness does not mean there is something wrong with you, and in fact might even mean there is something right with you.  So breathe, accept and face the pain head on in honesty, let it wash through you and live that part of life too, and watch as you process it like the cleansing of a river and you will be able to feel what you really are.

Source of Vitality

I used to think that escaping hardship was the way to find happiness, but I have learned that it is only the way to decimate life itself.  How many people with our modern comforts have been able to run away from life, hide from the suffering around them, and box themselves in at 72 degrees without the need to interact or open up to anyone around them less in the vulnerability of life they might be exposed and/or hurt?  By doing so, they have cut themselves off from the life-source, they wither as a dried reed and the result is purposelessness, boredom, and eventually nihilism and misery.  Where you cannot embrace the opposites that make the highs of life available, you will find that you have no life at all, no breath, no color, no anything. 

And so it is that we must go and be among the opposition of the world, take the journey of manifesting truth and love in the face of opposition that we might overcome it – not through permanent eradication but through transcendence and allowing good to overcome the evil, for new evil will continue to rise in the eternal dance that allows us to manifest our very natures of love and therefore to have joy in the music and dance of life.

Life may therefore be defined as the infinite manifestation and display of what we are, in contrast to what we are not. True life, vitality, consists in the ability to be with both, and I have learned for myself that we are capable of just that.