Snow of tomorrow | Let's make winter the way we like it?

To-do lists, training plans, tracking apps: We love such self-optimization aids. After all, there's always room for a little more, right? A tenth faster, a gram lighter, just that little bit better. When we make new New Year's resolutions year after year, which we discard after two weeks, we not only put this self-optimization shoe on our own bodies and mental health, but also often tend to transfer this habit to the outside world. A good example: winter.

The fickle friend, winter

But it is also fickle. Sometimes it arrives in September with a meter of powder and sub-zero temperatures, sometimes it leaves us scratching our ski boots on the foehn-warm asphalt until January. It is reluctant to adhere to the calendar date for the start of winter on December 21. Let alone the meteorological one. Sometimes winter feels like that fickle school friend who could never make up her mind - where she wants to go, what she wants to eat, what she wants to wear. Just indecisive. I can't rely on him, even though my smartphone tells me that I already had four days of skiing this time last year. And now? Nada. Niente. Nothing. Sure, I could slide around on the slabs of ice on the Tyrolean glaciers with hundreds of others and stand in the lift queue to get my day ticket. I could also glide over the first ribbons of artificial snow against a green mountain backdrop, greet hikers and mountain bikers at the valley station and enjoy the latest achievements of the artificial snow industry. Or simply traveling after winter. To South America or New Zealand in summer. There will be snow there. But do I have to?

I don't think I want to. Sure, I can write that this is supposed to be a sustainability column and that we should drive less to the glaciers anyway, that flying shouldn't be up for discussion anyway, that we shouldn't support these big ski resorts, that we should carpool or take public transport to the gondola and preferably bring our snacks in a stainless steel can and that our ski jackets are made from recycled polyester. But we've already been through all that, haven't we? I think we've gone beyond that. We know that things can't go on like this - and I'm not talking about winter sports, but in general. Last winter, we even discussed the demand that everything must become more radical, that lifts must be torn down. I think we can leave that behind us as well.

But what actually is snow? Is it a natural hazard? An economic resource, part of the global climate system or perhaps just "pretty water", as the writer Dora Heldt once called it? The fact is that snow makes skiing possible in the first place. In all its facets. And this column is all about this snow. Not the snow of yesterday. Not the non-existent snow of today. But about the snow of tomorrow. And how we can deal with it - without any self-optimization trackers.

Because let's be honest: self-optimization is so 2015. Mindfulness and mindfulness are in now. The complete opposite! It's all about fully savoring the moment, accepting the external circumstances as they are. So let's put the tracking apps aside for this winter, celebrate winter when it comes and use this column - and, of course, beyond it - to work for the snow of tomorrow with understanding, humility and a spark of rebellion.