Comfort. Comfort place, comfort food, comfort zone, etc. We use the word ‘comfort’ when expressing something warm and positive. Rightfully so. But, is it really all warm and positive? I believe there is a different perspective of seeing comfort, one that is not too warm, and the effect it can have when we are too much at ease.
Personally speaking, being too comfortable in whatever state loosens me; it gives me a feeling of slowing down, and I am not a fan of that. So I tend to enjoy the discomfort in my daily life. It pushes me to get things done, allows me to think more, and with time, those uncomfortableness slowly becomes comfortable; resulting in enlarging my boundaries.
September 2023 in Military. Me as an outsider prior to joining, the military sounded like some kind of hell. Strict, hierarchy/ranking system, need to follow orders from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep. Freedom, gone. Sounds like hell? Maybe. But now that I am discharged, I can definitely say it is not as bad as people on the outside think. Yes, it still is a place far from comfort and not the ideal environment to live. But I have to admit, by the time I was being discharged, the army was real comfortable for me. Routined based life, exercising, time off from electronic devices, plenty of reading. I really enjoyed my last couple months in the army. But does that truly mean the army is comfortable? Absolutely not. After a year or so, I just got comfortable with what was once a discomfort, to a point where the discomfort was no longer noticeable.
What about now then? Now that I am back in Switzerland; a place where I have spent half of my life, a place I am supposed to feel very much at home, does not have that same level of comfort that I used to have here. Simply because, I have been away from here in the last 2 years or so and gotten comfortable with my life in Korea. Physically and mentally I am used to life back in Korea as of now. But one thing I am sure of is that this will change overtime. I will get re-used in this comfort and discomfort again and I will feel right at home again.
Moving on from personal experiences, there is another perspective where we as humans are also very used to living with discomforts around us without us even noticing in our daily lives. Who knew we needed a smartphone back in the 2000s? Look at it now, it undoubtedly became one of the most irreplaceable objects in our lives, as much as I do not want to admit it. This is a pure example of us living with difficulties/discomforts without evening noticing. Steve Jobs changed the world with the Iphone. Nobody believed in it. In the 1980s, Mckinsey advised AT&T to not go into the smartphone market because there is no market for it. There wasn’t yes, but it was one action away from being created, and Steve Jobs saw that. No offence Mckinsey, but I do not think you were quite right there. Speaking of smartphones, what is the first reaction from people whenever the new IOS updates arrive? It’s mostly negative; saying that they do not like the change and the old version was better. Most of the time, there is more negative than positive. Is that because we actually hate the update or because we are not comfortable with the new updates yet? Just like Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT? Who would’ve thought we would need such technology? We were living just fine before that, but it is slowly becoming an irreplaceable technology in our lives (I don't use ChatGPT, but wish I had it when I was still in school)
Picture from "New York Post"
Oftentimes, we tend to just live through the unnoticed discomfort because they are comfortable the way they are. But the truth is, we are one step away from fixing all discomforts; actions.
But obviously, we can’t only live with discomfort. As much as I enjoy the discomfort, I do believe the balance between comfort and discomfort is the right way of living. We all need a certain level of comfort, but too much comfort can soften you up, make you too loose. Nobody will move forward or change with comfort. But I hope people also do not always interpret discomfort as a negative thing, as discomfort will push us to another level, change us in ways we could not have imagined. Historically speaking, when people took discomfort into their own manner, that’s when revolutions happened. I am not saying everyone should try to be the next Steve Jobs, but challenge your discomfort to a level it gets comfortable through action.
