The Last Thing I Want to Do

From the Archive - December, 2018

I take cold showers in the morning. First thing. I'm not sure why, it’s already cold outside.

My Uncle Nick takes cold showers in the morning, always has. “Why do you take cold showers, Uncle Nick?”

“Well, they just get me going,” he would say, in his Georgia drawl. “Every time I take one, I feel… revitalized.” He’s 85. I guess that’s what you’re looking for at that age — revitalization.

Maybe I take cold showers because of famous Russian weightlifter Dmitry Klokov. In a documentary interview, Dmitry’s father Vyacheslav tells us about how, as a boy, his son would wake up every morning and throw himself into a small pool of water they had behind their house, no matter the season. Summer day, Dmitry was in the pool. Frozen January morning, Dmitry was in the pool.

In the interview, his father says he did it to build character, and Dmitry just smiles.

I guess that’s what you’re looking for when you’re 12 and are expected to follow in the footsteps of your world champion, world record-holder dad — character.

Or maybe the reason I take cold showers is because of Wim Hof, the Iceman: Dutch wellness guru and major proponent of cold exposure. Hof is big on social media and I follow him for his wild daily reminders such as “We have become alienated from nature, but the cold is capable of bringing us back to what we have lost.”

He posts about the health and mental benefits of cold showers, and central to it all is this theme of tapping into a well of inner power. Hof always asserts that there is superhuman strength deep within all of us that allows people to withstand extraordinary amounts of pain, and he climbed Everest in a pair of shorts to prove just that.

I guess that’s what you look for when you’re 36 years old and you lose your wife to suicide, leaving you and your four children behind — superhuman strength.

I think I take cold showers in the morning because it’s hard. Because I get to tell people, “I take cold showers in the morning,” and sound like a steely, hardcore kind of guy. Because in the moment before stepping into the water I am afraid. Because I want to believe it’s supporting my immune system and preventing hair loss and improving my circadian rhythm. Because hot showers make me feel guilty. Because it’s cultivating discipline.

Because it’s the last thing I want to do today.

And it’s already done.