On Comfort and Diversion

The idea of comfort has been on my mind lately.

I have long since been convinced that one of the greatest drives of human behavior is the desire for comfort. While we would all like to be ecstatically happy all of the time, most of the time we will settle for being comfortable. While we would like to live in perfect safety with no fear of danger or mishap, most of the time we will settle for the dangers being relatively remote possibilities, or at least problems to deal with later.

This drive for comfort has affected our social behavior: many codes of etiquette and conduct are based on the goal of preventing undue discomfort to another person. We all make small sacrifices, experience tiny discomforts, to reduce a possible greater discomfort in another person. While this is reasonable, problems ensue when certain people are expected to make greater sacrifices than others. This kind of incongruity develops naturally due to the complexity of our social interactions and our different living situations, and is impossible to completely eradicate. Regardless, it’s important to recognize when one person is sacrificing their comfort for another to an unequal level.

However.

A lot of people spend much of their time actively seeking comfort, or a lessening of discomfort. Be it through entertainment media, local venues of food or activity, or some kind of mind-altering substance, where these things cannot provide joy many instead depend on them to provide momentary ease. This impulse is natural, but it is also not conducive to our self-actualization in a greater context. If we can be sated in the moment by simple pleasures, we have less incentive to work toward greater and more meaningful, fulfilling pleasures that could otherwise be achieved, and that would sustain us for longer than the brief moments we currently are able to seize.

It is necessary to understand and consciously remember that discomfort is part of life, and that it can lead to new, potentially more satisfying situations. We should not shy from discomfort, nor let comfort become our normal state. And in particular, when someone says or does something that is discomforting, but not actually harmful, they have only granted us an opportunity for growth and new understanding. For this, we should be grateful, and we should likewise expect gratitude in return for such behavior.

Let us disrupt the comfort of others: gently, kindly, and with regard for those who, in greatest desperation of need, may suffer real mental harm without their comforts. But among those who are simply going about their lives, hoping to put off personal responsibility for the state of their community, we can help them to better themselves by creating small moments of strangeness, of uncertainty, of challenge to the most common ways of thinking and behaving.

And if they say we are disturbing them, we say “You’re welcome.”

Comfort is not a right. At best, it is earned by our efforts. But most likely, it is a matter of happenstance, a fleeting situation that we should not expect to prolong. By enjoying it when it occurs and not trying to stretch it out, we can make it mean more. And we can better prime ourselves for the discomfort that must be endured.