Make Yourself Deeply Uncomfortable
Walking through the grocery store a while ago I saw a man wearing a t-shirt that said, “Comfort is a slow death.” It’s true. Comfort amounts to self-imposed and culturally imposed guardrails limiting what we think we can do. It’s seductive: warm and well-fed we are so easily tamed.
I’m reminded of the scene in the Wizard of Oz when the evil witch casts a spell on Dorothy and her friends in a poppy field just outside their destination. She waves her wand over them with the incantation, “Sleep……sleep…..” They’re so tired and the field is so comfortable. Keeping them comfortable was a brilliant way to keep them from getting to Oz.
Athletes know that they have to push far beyond their comfort zones in order to achieve physical goals. That’s what coaches are for, because we humans too easily let up on ourselves. We’d rather take a nap than run another lap.
Sociologist Resmaa Menakem introduced me to the idea of clean pain and dirty pain. We don’t get to choose whether we feel pain, but we get to choose whether it will be healing pain (clean pain) or dirty pain that just sits there stinking like stagnant water. When we choose comfort, we’re sometimes muffling dirty pain, drowning it in coffee or booze, in Netflix binges and food. If we choose discomfort, we can consciously choose clean pain, moving it through and out of our bodies, dealing with our shit rather than swaddling that poopy baby.
Pilgrimage is one way to practice making ourselves deeply uncomfortable, of choosing clean pain. Spiritual growth happens when we go where we’re not supposed to go and meet people we’re not supposed to meet. By walking further in a day than we ever thought possible, reclining in the ditch beside a busy road, going without food longer than seems reasonable, and being out in the weather all damn day.
The key is the right amount of discomfort (and we remember what a privilege it is to choose our level of discomfort). The sweet spot is called eustress. It’s a growth edge where we’re pushed but not paralyzed – struck down but not destroyed. We do this when we take the riskier route and get lost, when we choose the hill that makes us shake and pant, when we forge out into the great beyond in rain and show rather than waiting for the weather to clear, when we do something that scares us just a little bit every day. It’s damn uncomfortable, but we grow. We learn to trust that we can get ourselves out of whatever we get ourselves into, that our bodies and minds are tougher than we think (and getting stronger all the time).
Birthing our true selves, all that we are and can be, requires labor pains. Choose discomfort, in big and small ways, a little bit every day. Our discomfort can take several forms: physical, spiritual, psychological, and emotional. Physical discomfort might include fasting or allowing yourself to be cold or hot for a while. Spiritual discomfort, for me, is going to Spanish mass and allowing myself to feel disoriented and a little out of place. Psychological discomfort can come from learning a new language or a new skill. Emotional discomfort comes from saying the hard, but necessary, thing or not shying away from conflict. Social discomfort can be as simple as striking up a conversation with the waitress rather than treating her like a food-delivery tool. These are the labor pains that birth who we were meant to be.
We all have different comfort zones. What may be uncomfortable for me is entirely comfortable for you. But we all know when the moments come when we choose comfort over discomfort. I’m not saying to choose discomfort every time, but choose consciously. A person living a life of pilgrimage might aim for choosing discomfort about half the time. Imagine how you and your life might look different if you did that every day this year. Not sleeping in poppy fields, but forging ahead, little by little, day by day.