Should we just give up now it’s winter?

What makes any of what we do feel worthwhile? Love and work is the traditional, post-Freudian formulation. If you, like me, are staring at a leaden sky and wondering whether to cease all effort until the spring, remember that Freud’s two cornerstones of what it is to be human will probably get you through the season, or even the next hour pretty effectively. Along with love and work, we can also rely on the slightly less grand subcategories of duty and habit — not to be despised as motivators either. But sometimes it’s all a bit much. And that’s when temptation strikes — should you just give up?

Plugging away and going through the motions can, of course, be the remedy if you just want the feeling to pass. Few will be able to see that you lack your accustomed get-up-and-go. Not least because it’s so bloody dark at this time of year. They can hardly make out your face let alone the void where your soul once dwelt. The gloaming seems to start at about 3pm.

Ah the void. Let’s face it, when the British winter starts to close in, it can be everywhere you look. So I’m here, friends, to tell you that there is nothing wrong with your instinct. When faced with weather that is wuthering and spirits that are low, why aim for the heights of achievement? I support you in your quest for a duvet and immersion in a good book — yea, even unto the Brontës. I went through a phase in my twenties of reading Bleak House almost every winter, with the occasional break for a Wilkie Collins, and it did me a world of good, especially when combined with a bag of toffees. Character building, don’t you know.

But modern life isn’t very indulgent of just going back to bed. It smacks either of fecklessness, defeatism or both. I ask you, though, what’s wrong with that, at least from time to time? Your Fitbit won’t like it much, but you probably will — and who’s the real boss?

The French have a saying, reculer pour mieux sauter, which means to take a step back in order to better jump forward — not quite the same as a tactical withdrawal from the fray, but it feels like a pretty similar, and equally useful, idea. My grandma used to quote an even better proverb, possibly self-penned. On deciding to abandon some project, she would declaim: “Rats on that for a game of marbles.” When the wintry gloom becomes unbearable, I hear this phrase in my head. Grandma was healthy and active until the ripe old age of 95, but she certainly wouldn’t have kowtowed to a fitness tracker when she wanted to beat a retreat to her Mills & Boon.

Is it always worth persisting? That’s the question implied in the game of marbles idiom — or “game of soldiers”, as some people have it. To keep calm and carry on, as the motto tells us, is to display the qualities our society lauds: grit, resilience and all that puritanical stuff. Sometimes it’s not the best policy, though I must admit to hearing myself expostulate to my family on occasion that some sort of effort continues to be necessary “otherwise we might as well all lie down on the floor”.

There’s a marvellous line in Kafka, just to return to the wuthering heights of high culture for a moment, quoted by the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in his book, On Giving Up. “The advantage of lying on the floor is that there is nowhere else to fall.” Yes, very droll, Franz. And I did chuckle in recognition of this urge to get horizontal.

But the whole idea of giving up needs a rebrand. I’m speaking here on behalf of those who like a nice lie down. As does Phillips, in his rather more highfalutin way, arguing that throwing in the towel can actually be a positive choice. We are trained to value “seeing things through”, he says, often to the bitter end. But like everything in life, it’s a trade off. If you keep on with what’s not going well, or begins to make you scream inwardly, you may be losing out on what you could be enjoying instead.

So let’s embrace the sense of freedom to be had from taking a packet of chocolate biscuits to bed and deciding to opt out for a bit. It’s a halfway house between lying on the floor like Kafka and fighting on. Think of the French. Think of Grandma. And, if you’ve already finished the Brontës (or indeed given up on them), then I can heartily recommend The Woman in White.

Miranda Green is the FT’s deputy opinion editor

Email Miranda at[email protected]

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Miranda Green