Climate Anxiety, Winter Sports and Self-Image
Looks like I have thrown a whole bunch of big words in the title but I believe I have a very common story a lot of people can relate to, about a season-ending injury and insecurities that follow afterwards.
For the longest time, I complained to my closest friends about not having an identity besides being a data scientist. “I am not really a person, I am a data scientist and if I don’t have that I don’t know who I am.” was a common sentence I would just put out there. Of course, they replied with all the other things that I had going on, none of them really registered.
That is until I (re)discovered the stuff that I used to do, and some new things. One of those things was skiing. I have been a skier since I was 5. I basically grew up on skis. Once upon a time, I even used to be good at it. For the past few seasons, I have been gradually building those skills back up. This season, I pushed hard on learning technique, taking several private lessons to comfortably ski down any groomed slope and some freeride terrain (in which I am still absolute garbage by any reasonable standard, although I can make my way down somehow).
One of the reasons why I was pushing so hard this season is because I don’t know how much longer we will continue to have winters. Every time I go on a lift, I cannot help but notice the rocks that used to be covered with snow are more and more naked. The towns just below the ski zones have little to no snow. And when we get snow, it is either a complete pour over a day or two, or we don’t get snow at all. Here in Sofia, Bulgaria we even had a day in February with 15 degrees Celsius temperatures. Fifteen. Degrees. Celcius. Going out in a leather jacket and still being warm was a terrifying feeling in February.
Then the next day I was on the slopes so early that lifts were not working and I walked up and down to ride, simply because I was terrified it would be gone before I knew it. S-tier anxiety right there.
The early morning was fine, and then it wasn’t. I took a bad fall. Torn meniscus. Season likely over unless my doctor clears me for riding in braces. I had started compiling my touring gear, so I could continue to ride in high mountains post-season (because, again, I am not sure how much longer we’ll have this). All gone in an instant. And I immediately regressed to an identity crisis.
I am not quite sure why I keep attaching my self-image to accomplishments or ‘being good at something’, whatever that may be. This is potentially a topic for long and frequent therapy sessions but the issue, in a nutshell, is this:
- We are facing a serious threat from climate change to life as we know it. People think COVID-19 devastated our lifestyle. I agree. But I also maintain that it was so apparent only because it was so sudden. Climate change will have a far deeper impact on everything we can and cannot do. COVID-19 will eventually be taken under control, we are getting there. If climate change gets out of hand, and it is very close to being so, there is absolutely nothing we can do to ‘fix’ it. Climate change has been gradually wrecking everything for decades now, and people don’t pay attention to it simply because it is gradual, unlike COVID.
- I don’t really care about much, but I care a lot and very deeply about the stuff that I care about. So I have very severe reactions to being torn from those things. Hence the identity crisis. But, if climate change persists as is, I won’t be the only one having this issue. We will look back to these days in the future and realise we are so far from the person we were. This is obviously normal, people change and hopefully grow as time goes on. But some of the changes won’t be our choice. They would be forced on us by climate change, and I can almost guarantee those things won’t be in the way of growth. They would be in the way of compensating for the things we lost.
Not quite sure why I am typing these down, I am a bit overwhelmed I guess. And very very upset, angry, scared. But there are things we can do in our private lives, they won’t make much difference unless large corporations and governments commit to climate action and truly deliver. The thing that would make a difference is voting with your wallet. Try not to buy from climate-damaging (or even climate-oblivious) companies. Banking is super important too, as banks fund most of the companies who do most climate damage. As of this post, I will do my best to change my banking.
I will just leave some resources below for people who are interested in exploring this, but please remember, imperfect climate action is better than none. You may not be able to do all the things to help with this, and as an individual your lifestyle impact will be small, but every bit counts. In any case, even if we fail in the end, we can say we did all we reasonably could. And that is some solace. About imperfect activism: http://raisingrevolutionaries.co.uk/2019/06/13/why-the-world-needs-more-imperfect-activists/
- Protect our winters, targeted specifically to outdoors people https://protectourwinters.eu/
- General compilation of info on Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_action_on_climate_change
- List of individual actions https://psychology.org.au/getmedia/2a2156ab-559c-4316-888a-a8cd82fcb780/101-things-you-can-do-climate-change_1.pdf
