Today’s post is inspired by a friend of mine who is visiting us at the moment. And the subject cold weather is a bit strange to me as being Dutch cold weather has nothing inspiring to me as the Dutch normally associate cold weather with temperatures below twenty degrees Celsius and with moist or rainy weather that in general quite unpleasant in countries like The Netherlands. But my friend kind of insisted that she considered cold weather quite inspirational or is even inspired by cold weather and when thinking a bit further of course I also knew why.
As my friend is from The Philippines where it is normally quite hot, hotter than most Philippine people like, opposite to the Dutch in The Netherlands. So in The Philippines cold weather is related to cool weather, cooler weather than ‘hot’, where hot means that you can’t do so much and would like to have air conditioning to make the temperature a bit more comfortable than the common ‘hot’. And yes, Philippine people often like cooler areas to relax, to have holiday, to enjoy a weekend or so and where cooler to me has no association with cold, of course Philippine people would associate cold, especially when related to weather, with cool weather, weather that is agreeable opposite to ‘hot’, something like twenty five degrees Celsius that I would also consider a nice ‘cool’ temperature.
So this whole thing made me think that ‘cold’ is really relative and that ‘cold weather’ can mean many things to people like either nice or positive or not so nice or negative. It is indeed a matter of perspective, of where you come from or what association you have with a certain word or condition.
And the message I wanted to pass in this post is that we have to be very careful in interpreting things, interpreting things other people say or mean, as we may fully misunderstand what is being said, what is being conveyed just by words that have a fully different meaning to us than to the other person.
And also that my first association with ‘cold’ in general is negative, because somehow I prefer ‘warm’ over ‘cold’. But only in certain situations, for certain things. As of course I would want my ice cream cold, ice cold and not warm. And I want my refrigerator or freezer also cold. And indeed, when it’s too hot outside I would also want it cooler or want to use air conditioning.
So again, it’s all in the mind, in the thoughts we have when hearing a certain word, a certain sound.
So be careful how to interpret things, whether it is from what others say or whether they are just thoughts in our own mind. As it is all a matter of perspective, of perception.