Discomfort enables comfort.
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We love to be comfortable. We love comfortable clothes. We love comfortable relationships. We love comfortable jobs. I’m sure you can think of a few more comfortable things that you love. We all love comfort.
A homeostatic balance between comfort and discomfort exists in this world. That balance shifts constantly in life. With experiences. With the acquisition of knowledge. Much of this is due to the influence that experience and knowledge have on our perspectives of comfort. The constantly changing world also has influence. As we go through life, we gain better understanding of what makes us comfortable. So we pursue more things that make us feel comfortable. This comes back to the fact that we love comfort. I believe that there is a potential danger in seeking comfort and this relates to the role of discomfort in the world. I’m not saying that comfort is not valuable in this world. I’m not saying that seeking comfort is negative. My focus is centered on the interaction between comfort and discomfort. Much of my belief is established by looking at how humans generally function in life and using this as a guide for understanding. So let’s go deeper into this.
As humans, we are capable of physiological responses based on interactions with our internal and external environments. A key concept in this functionality is adaptation. This adaptation can be positive or negative, but the concept itself is important to dive deeper into. Much of human history is based on the need to survive. We were forced to adapt and we did. It is amazing what abilities humans have been equipped with to live on this planet. Humans were made to adapt. This means that we are capable of adapting to positive and negative. We are able to adapt our minds and our bodies for life. We are able to adapt to the environment. We are able to adapt to technology. We are able to adapt to almost anything. We are able to adapt to comfort. We are able to adapt to discomfort.
Every adaptation produces different results.
If we adapt to comfort and the goal was to seek comfort, there is less reason to adapt. This is one of the many possible results.. Connecting this back to to history and how humans function, there is a relationship that has existed between comfort and survival for a long time. A phrase was even made about this relationship. The survival of the fittest. The term fittest does not solely apply to physical fitness. It also applies to the mental. The spiritual. The intellectual. Add in the fact that most of the world operates on competition and the need to become the fittest is prioritized even more. Comfort truly becomes a disadvantage at this point. It makes it harder to survive. This life is definitely not survival of the most comfortable. I believe this is why we seek change when we get too comfortable. Our human nature knows that being too comfortable poses a threat to our survival. We need to keep adapting. Yet, we consciously choose to seek comfort most of the time. We become so blinded by the comforts of the world that we begin to forget what it means to be human. We become trapped in a world of comfort. A world of comfort is not an accurate portrayal of life. But we believe it because we have become desensitized to comfort. We have adapted to comfort.
The amazing thing is that most of the time our human nature or natural instinct is more aware than we are when it comes to comfort. More aware of what poses a threat to us. More aware of a threat to us as individuals. And to us as a collective. When we fall into comfort, our human nature will find a way to make us uncomfortable. It will find a way to force us to adapt. We gain a lot of value from discomfort in life. As humans, discomfort forces us to adapt and adapting to discomfort enables us to learn. To acquire knowledge. To gain experience. To grow stronger. To improve. To survive. To thrive. Without discomfort, we wouldn’t know what it feels like to be alive. This is just a glimpse of the true value that discomfort can add to human existence.
The balance that exists between comfort and discomfort is a perplexing relationship. We must find a connection point. Thinking about the potential origins of comfort and discomfort provides a possible connection point. I believe that the potential origin of discomfort on this planet is to ensure human survival. The reward for survival is life. This has been observed throughout human history. This life that we are rewarded with is also where comfort is sought after. We experience comfort that has arisen from discomfort. Without discomfort, I do not think that we would value comfort. There would be less understanding of this concept of comfort. We would perceive it as much more counterintuitive to human nature. The blindness of comfort would also cease to exist if discomfort was not present. Comfort truly relies on discomfort in more ways than we typically think.
Discomfort enables comfort.
If we can become more aware of comfort, I believe that we will seek discomfort more. Our understanding of the balance between the two will increase and enable us to truly live a better life. Humans have adapted to comfort. This means that we can live with comfort, understand it, and even use it to our benefit. We can find a way to make it valuable like discomfort. Maybe we just understand discomfort more than comfort at the moment. Maybe the value of comfort is yet to be discovered to its full extent. History has taught us a lot about discomfort. The future may be what teaches us a lot about comfort. Regardless of our understanding, I know that we will adapt and continue to survive.