Is It Genes or Culture? And Does It Really Matter?

- “How are you dealing with all the dark and cold?” - I recently asked one of the expats here in Warsaw. - “It’s hard enough for us born and raised here, I can’t imagine how much harder it must be for someone coming from a hot and sunny place like Brazil!”

- “It’s weird, everyone keeps telling me how bad they feel when it’s dark outside, but it doesn’t really bother me much.” - he said - “Of course I love sunshine, but I’m perfectly fine without it. It makes me wonder, is this seasonal blues a law of nature, or just a cultural story everyone here keeps telling themselves?”

That’s not the kind of answer I expected. I thought the need for sunshine is a given, especially for people who are used to having plenty of it. Personally, I’m very sensitive to how much sunlight is available, and how little of it we have especially in December. This time of year was always challenging for me, until I stopped resisting this and accepted it as a natural part of life, but I’d still rather spend the whole month under a blanket and not doing much when given a chance.

I’m a bear in a way. For the most of the year I’m full of energy to do all sorts of things, but whenever the darkness comes all I can think of is sleeping. I can either be a miserable bear trying to perform at my 100% and feeling guilty for not keeping up, or a happy bear enjoying life at a much slower pace. Just continuing to live as usual doesn’t seem like an option available to me.

I know there are people who aren’t affected by seasonal changes as much as I am. Even my husband is much less sensitive to the amount of sunshine around. Are they telling themselves different stories? Actual bears are unlikely to tell themselves any stories at all, and yet they sleep through most of the winter, while wolves, deer, or other large animals do not.

How much of seasonal mood changes is cultural and how much is genetic? I don’t know, but family and tribe history is likely to make a difference here. In tropical regions fresh food is available at all times. Until very recently, people here in the global north had to spend months preparing just so that they could survive through the winter. And even if they had plenty of food stockpiled, they could still die just being outside for too long. I don’t have any evidence to prove it, but sometimes when I’m out in the freezing cold for extended time, I get a sense that there were people among my ancestors who died in this way.

I don’t really care if it’s genetic or cultural. Here in Poland we come from a long line of people for whom winter was always challenging, and so both our minds and bodies are telling us to brace ourselves. We might not be in danger anymore, but acknowledging this will take time, just like it takes at least a few generations to fully recover from a war.

I know I’m unlikely to die of hunger or cold, even in the coldest months of the year. But that’s just surface-level understanding, like something you memorized in class but never actually tried in real life. Until I can really feel it in my body, I will still travel south whenever I have a chance, and fully embrace my bear mode for the rest of the time.