Tag: comfort

Rebooting the Ecosystem

It was a warm summer night.

The windows were cracked, filling my bedroom with a warm breeze. Outside, cars drove by the house intermittently, while the glow of the moon illuminated the roadway.

I was keenly aware of all this because I couldn’t sleep a wink.

My insomnia was understandable. Hours earlier, I’d returned from a trip to the other side of the globe. My internal clock told me it was 1 PM, not 1 AM. This was no time for sleep.

But there was more than jet lag keeping me awake.

For I was 10 years old, and I had just traveled abroad for the first time. In particular, I’d spent three weeks in China with my family.

Vacationing in a place so radically different from the environs I’d known was jarring. By the end of the trip, the disparity was playing tricks on my mind.

I had begun to think that the existence I had before boarding that flight across the Pacific was an illusion. That the life I’d remembered in America wasn’t real.

But once I got off that return flight, everything was still there. The city lights. My grandparents. Our house. Our dog.

It was all a bit much for me to process. So, I went to my bedroom and cried. Then, I tried in vain to fall asleep.

I hadn’t thought much of this particular night until recently. But now, it’s top of mind.

For after a lost year where our world was upended by a microscopic virus, change is again in the air. Our path out of the pandemic is clearly illuminated. And a return to the familiar awaits on the other side.

No, things won’t ever really be the same. Many have lost loved ones. Businesses have gone under. And there’s plenty that we’ll still do virtually after the health emergency recedes.

But there is plenty from the “before times” that will be returning. In-person events. Family barbecues. Nights out with friends.

And as we wade back into these experiences, there’s a good chance we’ll end up overwhelmed. Just like I did the night I returned from China.

Why is re-entry so clunky? Why is it so hard to reembrace the familiar?

A lot has to do with the underlying system.

What we call the familiar is actually an elaborate social and physical ecosystem. It’s the sights, sounds, and smells around us. But it’s also the paths we traverse, the people we associate with, and the norms that we follow.

When things are going well, we take much of this for granted. There’s no need to fuss about it, or even to notice it.

But if this ecosystem is taken away from us, we suddenly realize how fragile our assumptions were. And we need to work to get our sense of stability back.

Take domestic travel as an example. For many, crisscrossing United States has long felt ubiquitous. It was easy to hop a flight from Phoenix to Pittsburgh or to road trip from Charlotte to Chicago without missing a beat. The airports looked similar, the highway signs were uniform and there were ample hotel and restaurant brands along the route that we were comfortable with.

Much of this familiarity can be tied to two pieces of legislation.

One — the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 — built a national highway network. The other — the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 — effectively allowed airlines to do the same in the skies.

Providing a uniform way to get from Point A to Point B changed the way we think about mobility. Assuming we had the money and the time, we could head anywhere. And we wouldn’t need to worry about poor road conditions, inadequate lodging, or having to stop at a zillion airports along the way.

For years, nothing truly threatened that sense of travel freedom. The 9/11 attacks required us to beef up airport security, and surging gas prices have at times made road trips untenable. But despite those hurdles, we had ample opportunities to continue our journey unimpeded.

It took the pandemic to shatter that stability.

Now, to be clear, the interstates never shut down during the health crisis. Neither did airports. But traveling became much more burdensome.

Several states enacted quarantine requirements for travelers. Restaurants and hotels reduced services to follow health guidelines. And stay-at-home orders strongly discouraged travel for a time.

With so little peace of mind, many of us stopped traveling. It was too risky and too burdensome. For the first time in my life, I didn’t leave my own state for a year. In fact, I only left town once during that time.

But now, with vaccinations ramping up, many are looking to hit the road again. Many others are hoping to take to the skies.

These aspiring travelers are looking for a release. They’re seeking an escape from the horrors of the recent trip around the sun. They’re requesting a return to what they once knew.

But such desires might prove elusive. At least for now.

For while the highways and airports look similar to how they once did, the communities they connect do not. Our nation is still on the path back to the familiar, and the map is dotted with communities facing that same uneasiness.

A change of scenery won’t change that fact or speed up the timeline. We need something more to get there.

As I lay awake in my bedroom that warm summer night, I tried to will myself back to normalcy.

It would take me a week to get there. A week of groggily reacclimating with the environs I’d previously known so well.

I think the same perseverance is needed now, as we seek to reclaim what was once familiar.

For ecosystems can’t re-emerge in an instant. They take time to reboot.

And the ecosystem powering our way of life is extra fragile. It’s built on trust and human connection — both of which have been under siege lately.

The responsibility to get this project off the ground falls on our shoulders.

It’s on us to be deliberate and empathetic, as we work our way out of this forced hibernation. It’s our responsibility to resist the delusions of a quick fix. And it’s our charge to roll up our sleeves and rebuild connections.

This work won’t be glamorous, and it won’t seem particularly fun. But it will make our ecosystem stronger, and it will make us more resilient.

With patience, faith, and determination, we can do more than reclaim what we once had. We can build something even better.

So, let’s get to it.

Comfort in Discomfort

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?

Keeping it Consistent

Consistency.

It’s an attribute that I treasure more than just about any other.

Being consistent means being reliable. And, when it’s done right, it means being trustworthy.

Basically, it means being exactly what others think you are.

I see great value in this predictability. It provides for deep understanding and meaningful social connections.

And it keeps us at ease.

For, while we say Variety is the spice of life, constant spontaneity is stressful. When we don’t know what to expect from our family and friends from minute to minute, we tend to put up barriers. We become a skeptical observer of the world around us, instead of a participant in it.

Even the biggest hermits among us don’t want this. For if we can’t count on anything, if we can’t even rely on a roof over our head or clothes on our backs, the load can be too much for our mind to carry.

Make no mistake, consistency is a basic condition.

Yet, it’s an incredibly difficult one to pull off.

You see, keeping it consistent means producing the same output, time after time. No off days. No slip-ups. Consistency doesn’t allow for excuses, regardless of their validity.

But to err is human. Our actions and emotions can vary by nature. And this can make consistency seem like an impossible dream.

So, what can we do in the face of this conundrum? We can continue to work at it.

Take Words of the West as an example. Two years ago, I launched this website with four words, I am not perfect. I wasn’t perfect then, and I’m certainly not perfect now.

But I’ll be darned if I haven’t been consistent. I’ve put out an article every week since then.

This is not as easy as it seems. There are some weeks where the inspiration is lacking. And others where life simply gets in the way.

Yet, I continue to fight through these obstacles to put out fresh articles each week. I demand this of myself because my readers expect it from me.

And I can’t bear to break their trust by becoming unreliable.

We can all benefit by taking a similar approach.

By keeping it consistent, we can build connections. We can demonstrate our own reliability. And we can live more fulfilling lives.

This isn’t easy, by any means. It requires grit, determination and sacrifice.

But it’s certainly worth it.

Meeting Our Needs

We all have our priorities.

If we’ve heard this line before, it most likely came gift-wrapped in a derisive tone. We can be quite the judgmental lot as a society, and when someone’s set of priorities dares to defy our expectations, we all too often find ourselves scoffing in indignation.

But what are the right priorities to set? What are the expectations that should be met?

These questions will often bring an uncomfortable silence among the self-annointed peanut gallery. After all, it’s easier to point a finger at what’s considered wrong by society than to articulate what’s considered right.

Truth is, there is a road map to these questions. It’s called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Without digging too deeply into this theory (since I ain’t got a couch for you to lie on and tell me your feelings), it outlines a pyramid of needs, starting with the most basic and foundational and reaching its peak at self-actualization.

I remember vividly the day I discovered the truth behind this theory. I had just landed in Chile for a college study abroad program, and was in a private van heading with my classmates from the international airport in Santiago to Viña del Mar — the city we’d call home for the next two months or so.

Shortly after we got on the highway, the orange juice I’d downed on the plane caught up with me. After about 10 minutes of trying to soldier on, I asked the driver to pull over. He obliged at a scenic overlook, one that was conspicuously missing the type of thick roadside shrubbery those who make these types of pit stops hope to find. I ultimately had to climb a hill and wind around some barren desert plants to find a place where I could be comfortable relieving myself.

As I stood there, looking out across the Andes Mountains, I knew exactly where my priorities were. I was alone on a continent where I didn’t know a soul, en route to living quarters I knew little of. If there was a moment in my life where I was most out of my element, this would be it. But even at this moment, when nature called, I took great liberties to make sure my core needs were met. I even made sure my senses of safety, belonging and self-esteem (the middle sections of the Hierarchy of Needs pyramid) were met by making the extra effort to find a spot shielded from view to…you know.

As I returned to the van, I felt at peace. The unknown still awaited me, but the most basic level of normalcy had taken hold.

So what can we all learn from this, besides the fact that the terrain of Chile is quite rugged? Quite simply, our quibbling over our priorities in life is trivial. How we spend our time and who we spend it with is important, but the attention we give it is as overblown as the headlines in the gossip magazines in grocery store checkout aisles.

Are we fed? Are we clothed? Are we safe? Are we happy? These are the needs we must meet, the priorities we must set. For without these, we can’t function properly, let alone soar to our potential.

So the next time someone makes mention of your priorities, think of these basic needs — for both yourself and your loved ones. If these needs are met, and morality is ingrained in your actions, you’ll be off to a good start — no matter what the peanut gallery says.