Comfort Killer

I am the comfort killer.  I sleep very little. I work out to the point of being sick to my stomach. I push myself to do things I hate. I take cold or lukewarm showers. I read books that are agonizingly slow and are sometimes less exciting than watching paint dry.  I assure you I am not a masochist or Sysphean. However, many of you are probably wondering, “what the hell is wrong with you?”

This mental mindset of creating discomfort was not engaged in my mind over my entire life.  However, the first instance of such a pain-inducing drive stemmed from athletics.  As a young junior high school athlete, I was tall, lanky, not athletic, had two left feet (which I would get tangled), and lacked muscle tone.  I have never been the best athlete; however, I always strived to acquire one of the best attitudes.  This drive led me to devise grueling offseason workouts to push myself to new athletic heights (though meager to many).

The formal ideas of this discomfort-mindset were put into words as a high school junior.  I had a soccer coach who told us that we needed to practice at a speed where we lacked comfort.  He inherently knew we would make mistakes, embarrass ourselves, get scored on and run sprints (I think he was excited for the last part); however, his words had a deeper meaning.  The rationale for the lack of comfort came from the will to have our skills become comfortable; thus, achieving new heights in games and eventually the playoffs.

Applying the mentality of being uncomfortable with the goal of becoming comfortable only works if the one can train at a faster and faster and faster speed; however, outside of athletics, we find that there is rarely a path in which we can continuously proceed down by simply increasing speed.  The benefit of speed in sports is immense, but in the world outside of athletics, speed is not usually the solution.

In a career, we must find new innovations, new business platforms, new management strategies and new lesson plans; therefore, to improve, there isn’t a need to refine the current arsenal, but rather a need to develop the next big gun.  By remaining complacent with the current arsenal, but developing our speed, we become overly focused and truly fail to reach our potential.

This shortcoming in potential is best articulated through the belief of a confirmation-biased based society, whereby we will only devour ideas that are similar to our own.   Economists will read other economists’ works.  Sociologists will read other sociologists’ research.  Nurses will read about nursing.  Doctors will grab the brief from the American College of Surgeons.  We will soon become entranced in our field and never venture out into the uncomfortable unknown.

To continue in this post, I want to make it clear that I see the world precluding discomfort in three specific areas: learning, speaking, and reading.  In the subsequent paragraphs I will focus on each.

The first area is learning.  I hear parents and kids say “school is too hard” or “there is too much work” or “summer is for fun.”  I can agree to such arguments if the work is not mentally stimulating in the sense of “busy work;” however, the learning process is one in which there should be a struggle.  Countless studies have found that individuals who must fight for comprehension are the ones who understand the best.  Therefore, we should encourage difficult learning in the hopes of inspiring deeper inquiry.  However, our current educational model may be out of date and ineffective at galvanizing such internal drive.  By making individuals uncomfortable, but not allowing a path for them to discover, engage and develop outside of that struggle, or worst of all, telling them there is only one right answer, we will forever be caught in an endless spiral of comfort in schools coupled with slow educational growth.

The second area in which we shy away from uncomfortable situations is speaking.  We have all heard the saying “the only two things that you don’t talk about at dinner are religion and politics.”  Yet, the two topics dictate our daily lives in EVERY way.  If one manages to make it through a day without consulting or acting upon their religion (or lack thereof) and manages to not be involved in any type of politics, I wish to learn how that individual operates.  Because these topics are difficult and lead to a world without any comfort, we are okay with banishing them from being a side of the turkey at Thanksgiving.  I think that such a thought is quite horrific and if you would hear the conversations at my family dinner, politics and religion are usually the appetizer, main entrée, dessert, coffee and everything in between.  This comfort killing mindset at the table allows for the challenging of ideas and refinement of personal beliefs.  Just like a car engine, every couple thousand miles we need a metaphorical oil change; not the complete reversal of belief, but a simple cleaning, and rejuvenation from conversation and/or debate.  We must iron out the wrinkles that have been found through new worldly developments; thus, ensuring correct facts and well-thought opinions.

The last comfort world I see is reading.  Similar to the discussion of research within one’s discipline in previous paragraphs, reading becomes a belief compounding mechanism.  We rarely read books that are the complete opposite from our own beliefs.  I am willing to bet there are few religious individuals who have thoughtfully dissected other “competing” or alternative religious texts.  The acclaimed philosopher Franz Kafka said,

 “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

His words could not ring more true to this article than any other words.  The books that “wound or stab us” metaphorically require healing and repair; thus, we should strive to find ways to wound, stab and be effected by the texts upon the pages.

The lacking of comfort is something that will most likely never catch on.  Society likes the indulgence of a steaming hot shower, a cozy book, or a smooth learning curve.  Our families get along because politics and religion are table-taboo.  Yet, we limit our potential through these comforts; thus, begetting a society in which frozen seas live on without an axe or icebreaker in sight.