It's because we slow down in bad weather. Rather than think we have to do stuff we just stop.
Ah, but there's no consensus on what constitutes "bad weather." I'm fairly notorious amongst those who know me for having what they consider to be an almost entirely inverted sense of what constitutes good and bad weather - I love autumn and winter, tolerate certain things about spring, have an intense dislike of summer at least if it's what the majority call a "good" summer which, to them, means long periods of warm, dry, cloudless sunshine. I
detest hot weather with a detestation that I can't put into words and love cold or at the very least cool weather. In fact for my physiology broad sunshine in summer (though not in winter) - clear sun shining out of a cloudless blue sky - is oppressive and attacking, not the energising and health-giving joy that the majority seem to think it is. Summer is a thing to be endured and for the most part not enjoyed - enjoyment is for the rest of the year, autumn and winter especially - but living in England as I do, most of the time I can at least rely on the calming effect of at best mid-teens centigrade temperatures and a partially cloudy sky. A good day is a day of mixed and variable weather, especially if it involves some degree of cloud cover and, if possible, some rain - lucky for me that I live on the British Isles where this is the norm.
There are physiological reasons for this. It's a known thing by now that the amount and quality of natural daylight that a person receives has profound effects on the endocrine system, but not all people respond to it in the same way. The majority feel energised by long hours of daylight - in summer that means an early sunrise, late sunset - but others like me are so constituted that they work the other way around; too much sunlight is not only distracting, it's downright distressing. Some people it seems are intrinsically built for the short, dark days and the early nights and coming home to draw the curtains and put the telly on and pour a bottle of wine and to feel warm, cosy, snug and secure by 6:00pm (if that).
I don't know if I meet all the criteria for reverse SAD (yes, there is such a thing) in any clinical sense, but something of that sort is definitely at work. Absolutely no question whatever. In "normal" SAD - the sort that gets all the attention - people slow down in the winter months; they become lethargic, depressed, eat more, sleep more ... they become retarded, in the clinical sense of the word. People with reverse SAD go the other way; in the summer months, rather than suffering from depression, they tend on the whole to suffer from anxiety - to be nervous, anxious, jumpy, distracted, essentially to be over-stimulated by so much external activity which is a cause of too much, too long daylight, and start to feel at ease, comfortable again when that day arrives - in my experience there's always that one particular day, and it's always around sundown - when you notice that first little nibble, not a bite so much as a nip, of real chill in the air and you know that although it's not here yet, on the way, still to come, is the sight of the leaves starting to change colour and to shrivel and drop and for the rain to become more frequent
This lady is the same as me and absolutely gets it:
... now autumn is with us, with winter just around the corner, and something tells me it's pay-back time. It has occurred to me more than once that I might have some sort of reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder. Usually people get SAD at precisely this time of year when the days get shorter and darker. With me, SAD hits when the days get longer and brighter, or when I see the sartorial equivalent of the first swallow of summer: 'The First Man in Unflattering Khaki Shorts'. Or maybe it's the first headline declaring the 'race is on' to get a 'bikini body'. Whatever the trigger, I know when summer is coming because suddenly I feel wrong. I don't make sense in the summer, everything is too hot, too hopeless, too bewildering, I always feel I'm half a beat behind the world playing an eternal game of catch-up. That's the deal with reverse-SADos: summer means standing on the outside, watching the world through a miseryfilter, all the time entertaining fantasies about all-room air-conditioning.
Now, though, things are very different - the world so beautiful it takes your breath away. Leaves falling from the trees, puddles as permanent fixtures, fresh chilly mornings, faceslapping breezes, lots of excuses to wear coats, boots, plum-red scarves; everything, in fact, a good old-fashioned girl like me could want from a season. There's no bullying, no pressure. (Whoever felt the 'race was on' to get a 'raincoat body'?) And, day or night, you can walk around without worrying that the heat is going to melt the nose straight off your face.
For me the SAD has lifted. I feel like I should jump into a phone box, do a bit of spinning, and leap out as Super-Babs! The woman with autumn superpowers. There would have to be a voiceover: 'The kryptonite that was summer all but destroyed our heroine. But somehow she survived Anti-Pale Man and his sidekick Fake-Tan Woman. And now she is back to wreak a terrible revenge!'
Not that I am vengeful. I don't have to be. In fact, with my new-found serenity, I pity all you Summer People. Once the sun abandons you, the Ambre Solaire congeals, your menfolk stop feeling a compulsion to barbecue, you really fall to pieces, don't you? Disintegrate big-time. It's all snuffles here, shivering there, hating the rain, grumbling about how early it gets dark, and getting up when it looks like 'the middle of the night', and moan, moan, boo hoo, for months on end. Meanwhile, people like me, people who've got our super-powers back, are in our element.
With our superb bad-weather immune systems, we shrug off colds, we don't mind the dark (more flattering), even the crashing rain is OK (very Wuthering Heights). Once more we know how to dress (the first casualty for the reverse-SADo is looking good), how to eat (carbs, glorious carbs), and what joie de vivre feels like. And, crucially, we know we're going to feel like that for months on end. Maybe that is the real difference between those who prefer the cold months to the hot. It's like the SADs can only do summer, but the reverse-SADs can (just about), get through summer, but we're really good at winter, spring and autumn, which is threequarters of the year. Which makes us multi-taskers - men and women for all seasons. And while I don't want to keep rubbing it in like so much stale sun-cream, quite possibly that teensyweensy bit more evolved.
http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2005/oct/30/features.magazine7Sometimes - not always, but sometimes - it's a fantastic thing to live on a planet with 23.5 degrees of axial tilt
