The last ponderings covered the rabbit holes we go down sometimes when we think we have a health issue, but you know, sometimes cold feet are just that, cold feet and nothing else!
Today we go down a different path about cold feet which is, using the term cold feet for when someone is scared or hesitant to do something they had planned to do.
You have probably heard the term he/she had cold feet being used. On of the most common situations is when people get married and more often than not from the brides side. It goes something like this “she got cold feet on her wedding day and was late as a result” or “she had cold feet so cancelled the wedding”.
While looking into the origins of the use of cold feet to depict being scared or hesitant TPP found that there are a number of beliefs as to where came from. They include:
- it is a representation of feet being frozen in place unable to move
- it comes from poor people who did not have enough money to buy shoes and which resulted in these people having cold feet and thus stopped them from taking actions
- it was coined by the German author Fritz Reuter in his book Seed Time and Harvest where gamblers got cold feet and did not play the card game
- it became popularised by author Stephen Crane in his book Maggie, A Girl Of The Streets, 1896. In it he wrote “I knew this was the way it would be. They got cold feet“.
No matter where the idea of not doing something because of cold feet came from, it is a very real phenomenon that can have a big impact on people.
Your homework for today is to ponder on a situation where you got cold feet, why it happened, what you did to resolve the situation and what you can learn from it for the next time you have cold feet.
Ponder away!
