January 2, 2015 at 3:04 p.m.
Plaid Clad Rambler: Polar plunging and identity rituals
Plaid Clad Rambler: Polar plunging and identity rituals
What possessed me to leap from a wood pallet through a square void punched out of the ice into water so frigid it causes animals to enter into a state of dormancy?
What caused me to spend both money and time to willingly humiliate myself in front of over 100 compete strangers by gracelessly scrambling up a ladder, gasping for air and grasping for a towel?
This was not how I usually spend my Saturdays, I thought. Polar plunging is not like a habit or an activity I do on Saturdays and Thursdays or the second Tuesday of every month.
"I play squash at the club with Jerry on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go for a spin on Mondays and Wednesdays, and on Saturdays I polar plunge at the Thirsty Whale."
Nor was plunging something I particularly enjoyed doing. Don't get me wrong, the event was well organized, and I applaud everyone involved. But I haven't exactly been chomping at the bit to careen into the icy cold abyss.
What motivated this masochistic lapse of judgement?
Certainly, the fact that it was a charity event may have been enough to convince others, but I could have done without it. Raising money for the Children's Miracle Network is a worthy cause, but I'm fairly certain the hospital receives other funding for which the funders are not required to subject their bodies to shock.
One might argue that my motivation stemmed from a self-seeking desire for recognition. I did, after all, announce myself as the Plaid Clad Rambler before I jumped, but many of the attendees were out-of-towners, and most locals already know The Lakeland Times. I hardly think jumping into slushy darkness in plaid pajamas is an effective marketing strategy, so I don't think that was the reason.
After numbly fumbling my way back into the bar area, I was struck by how similar this event was to other solo endurance events. Participants received T-shirts and commemorative towels. Spectators congratulated our bravery (or stupidity). There was beer at the finish line and folks bragging on how many times they've participated in the event. One guy admitted to having jumped in twice last year after losing a bet.
It was much like other events in which I have participated that have caused my sanity to be questioned. The Chicago Marathon and the Door County Century stand out as two examples where, upon crossing the finish line, I paused and asked myself how I came to enjoy pain and suffering so much that I would pay to suffer publicly alongside strangers.
It seems to me that the main similarity between the Chill Out and a marathon - besides commemorative shirts - is that both are rituals in which one is surrounded by other people making the same motions but for which success depends solely on the individual.
I think that second part is a crucial distinction. Both football and marathons are sports that are participated in alongside other athletes with millions of spectators, but while the success of a football team relies on many different players acting in tandem, a marathoner's success on race day depends on their own determination.
The plunge on Saturday was more like a marathon than a football game. Nobody else's performance would have suffered had I slipped on the ice at the last second.
It is precisely that camaraderie of doing something alongside others that makes it worthwhile to belly flop into a frozen lake wearing a fuchsia speedo or to run 26.2 miles until you forget everything else but throbbing pain and pressure popped blisters.
Now, I'm no anthropologist, but that's a bizarre social tendency. I don't even like most other people. What motivates me to ritualistically suffer alongside them?
My sister has done the polar plunge in Milwaukee at least three times now. She confesses she only does it for the commemorative hoodie. For the life of me, I can't think of a more worthy reason.
Identity anchors
I used to be a smoker. I don't mean a social smoker or someone who claims to only smoke when they drink. I mean I was an over a pack a day smoker, a smoker who would rather breath smoke than air, one who hand-rolled filterless cigarettes because it was cheaper.
As of the publication of this column, it has been three years, seven months and 20 days since I've had a cigarette. But who's counting?
The last cigarette I smoked was in the car port of The Surgery Center in Franklin before being admitted for a tonsilectomy. I figured the doctor-ordered six-week ban on smoking during recovery was the best chance I had at quitting.
My recovery period had its own horrors, including rushing to the ER while throwing up blood clots to have my wounds re-cauterized. My smoking cessation was successful, though; I haven't had a cigarette in years. But I'd be remiss if I didn't warn readers that oral surgery is an awful way to quit smoking.
One of the myriad things I loved about that deadly habit was that it offered something else to do.
If a party was getting to be too much, I could step outside for a cigarette. In school, smoking outside the library was my cure for writers block. Smoking was an excuse to take a quick break at work. It was the perfect way to finish a meal, a movie, a class, a cup of coffee, a drive, a party, a book.
Smoking is both habit forming and identity forming. Recent quitters often claim that they don't know what to do with their hands in social situations in which they would have otherwise held a cigarette. When I first quit, the thought of driving without smoking sounded half-full.
Cigarettes had become a way of grounding myself and identifying with something in a world that can at times feel meaningless and vacuous.
That yearning for something substantive isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's something humans are hardwired to do. I had merely found an identity in something that was incredibly unhealthy; cigarette related cancers and diseases remain one of the biggest killers in the U.S. next to heart disease.
What chemically addictive cigarettes and group events like marathons and polar plunges have in common is that both are often used to shape identity.
I became a marathoner the moment I crossed the Chicago Marathon finish line in Oct. 2006. Like becoming an uncle or being baptized or celebrating a bar mitzvah, there are events in our lives that come to define who we are.
I now have a shirt that communicates to others my identity as a polar plunger much in the same way a crucifix communicates one's identity as a Christian or a Pagg identifies one's identity as a Sikh.
The reason why people participate in things like polar plunges - despite the inherent absurdity of waiting in line to jump through a hole in the ice - is because something primitive inside us is sated by the ritual of finding identity and meaning in our world.
Of course, participating in things like polar plunges in no way cheapen other more significant identity forming rituals like quinceañeras or marriages, but they share an ability to create within us a new identity.
I've thought a lot about addiction, particularly whether or not addiction itself is benign and whether we have an inherited desire to seek out an identity in such things.
As Bob Dylan sang, you gotta serve somebody. When I gave up smoking, I took up cycling and running. Our ultimate identity transcends choice of hobbies, but I don't think that means it's wrong to take pleasure in the symbolic ritual of identity shaping activities.
I'm sure that won't be my last polar plunge. I can't say for certain why I'll subject myself to those frigid temps again. Maybe it's the allure of an identity shaping ritual. Maybe I'll do it for the T-shirt.
Ryan Matthews may be reached at [email protected].
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