Along a beach in California, a strange occurrence repeats itself, time and again.
Young men, dressed in full combat fatigues, lay on the beach, just beyond the water’s edge. Waves of salt water wash over the men, as they lay there, motionless.
These young men are Navy SEAL trainees, who are in the midst of an intense physical regimen — including long runs and swims. Lying on the beach might sound like a welcome respite from all this activity. But the practice is known as Surf Torture.
Why? Because, the ocean temperatures in California are chilly, to say the least. And staying motionless while that cold water washes over one’s body is no easy feat.
And that is precisely the point.
For if the trainees are going to take on some of the military’s most advanced missions, they will need to adapt to extreme conditions. They will need to take refuge in inhospitable locations.
They will need to find comfort in discomfort.
We are not all Navy SEALs.
We don’t all get sent abroad to risk our lives in covert missions. We don’t all need to leave our families behind for months at a time, missing holidays and birthdays. We don’t all have our jobs turned into documentaries and Hollywood movies.
And of course, many of us don’t have the stomach and stamina to do all these things — even if we wanted to. There is a persistent dropout rate in the Navy SEAL training program for a reason.
But we do have one thing in common with these elite warriors. We also must reckon with discomfort.
Maybe we won’t experience anything as visceral as having cold water wash over us. But over time, we will continually find ourselves in uncomfortable situations. And we must learn to come to terms with that reality.
This is evident in times of crisis. After a hurricane or tornado, we might spend days with no electricity in our homes. After a deadly attack, we might contend with beefed-up security measures. After the onset of a virus, we might find our social interactions altered by face masks, gloves and distancing requirements.
In each case, the signs of change are visceral, and the scars of the trauma are fresh. Comfort is a fading memory, now beyond our grasp.
And yet, this discomfort is a hallmark of gentler times as well. For even when the moment feels less dire, things rarely go exactly as we wish. Bad weather might ruin our outdoor activities. A technological issue at work could get us off schedule. We might get a stain on our favorite white shirt.
These issues are far less universal than the ones we must contend with in a crisis. But they still sting when we encounter them.
For our fantasy vision of how life should go is shattered. And we’re left to pick up the pieces.
People love to classify things.
Classification allows us to delineate. It gives us the means to create order out of chaos.
So, we classify students by academic grades. We classify taxpayers by their income bracket. And we classify segments of society by their hobbies and interests.
But what started as a basic tool has gotten out of hand. For now, we even classify the troubles we face.
Case in point? The prevalence of the term First World Problems. We hear this phrase all over these days.
This is an underhanded slight. One that serves as a reminder that things could be far worse.
It’s not ideal when our washing machine breaks down, for instance. But how bad is this inconvenience? Particularly when you consider there are people in Africa who don’t have access to clean water at all.
The everyday issues people face in the so-called third world are severe. Our issues, by contrast, are merely First World Problems.
It’s a nifty argument. A more sophisticated cousin to such tough-love sayings as Toughen up, buttercup! and Don’t cry over spilled milk.
But I don’t think it works.
For comparing one’s suffering to another doesn’t make the discomfort vanish. It simply hides it behind a layer of guilt and self-loathing.
Our issues still matter to us. They still frustrate us in the moment. And even though we can generally access solutions to these problems, such solutions still require sacrifice.
Dismissing concerns like these because of their scope — or our privilege — won’t help us adapt to the situation at hand. And adapting is precisely what we need to do.
Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.
Chuck Swindoll’s iconic line has practically become a rallying cry for those who define themselves through resilience.
But while it’s easy to find a spark from words like these, it’s harder to navigate the mechanics of change. Particularly when those mechanics feature prolonged discomfort.
We’re wired to treat discomfort like an obstacle. We act as if it’s a tunnel we must get through to find the glory on the other side.
This is why we seek to mitigate discomfort. This is why keep searching for the light in the distance.
But the world doesn’t work this way.
Discomfort doesn’t just appear or disappear in an instant. It’s omnipresent.
Masking discomfort with vices or delusions just won’t work long-term. We need to learn to live with it.
In fact, we must go further than mere coexistence. We must do what the Navy SEALs do. We must find comfort in discomfort.
This doesn’t require a trip to the California coastline or grueling physical exercise. But it does require some mental gymnastics.
It requires us to stop opining about how things were, or how we wished they would be. A Comfort in Discomfort mindset instead requires us to accept how things are — good, bad or ugly. Then, and only then, can we be expected to adapt accordingly.
This shift is quite a leap of faith. Even after years of trying, I have not been able to master it fully.
But I still hope to get there someday. And so should we all.
For once we let go of our dashed expectations of utopia, we can shed the weight of anxiety and longing. And, in doing this, we set ourselves up to thrive in nearly any landscape.
This is a future worth striving for. But we can only get there by going all in. By finding not only acceptance, but also comfort in discomfort.
Are you up for the challenge?