We all know the feeling of wintercearig, the slow, dreary emotion that comes with the dark and cold of the literal and figurative wintertimes of our lives. In Germany, however, people experience a somewhat similar emotion, though this is one is associated with the early springtime.
They call it frühjahrsmüdigkeit. It’s a complex mood that’s manifested as lethargy, irritability, slow thinking, and even joint pain.
There’s a great deal of speculation, but little scientific certainty, about frühjahrsmüdigkeit. Some people have speculated that hormonal adjustments within the body may cause people to get run down in early springtime.
Many of us habitually think of spring as a time of green, flowers, and sunshine. Actually, the world can be a messy, dreary place in spring. As the snow melts, all the muck that was heaped along with the snow into piles by the side of the road is revealed. Forgotten objects left behind in winter storms become visible again, but in a wet and warped version of their former selves. The ground is muddy, and the sky often has little to offer but rain. Even when the sun is out, it’s still weak and low in the sky. Chill remains in the air, and for a while, the trees remain leafless, skeletons of our expectations.
The fact that frühjahrsmüdigkeit is a phenomenon that’s mostly discussed in Germany suggests that the emotion has a strong cultural basis. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t real. Culture and emotion exist within our minds, and in the relationships between us, shaping the way that we perceive the world. Those perceptions themselves can’t be measured directly by anyone else, but they make up the core of our identities, and provide the motivations for the tangible decisions that we make in the world outside of ourselves.
Every year, large numbers of Germans take days off from work to stay home, sick with frühjahrsmüdigkeit. That’s real.
