Comfort

What causes comfort, and where does it lead us?

“Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar His face is to us.”
― Ezra Taft Benson

I believe I have already mentioned my liking for solo trips. There are many reasons for that; they help me relax after long periods without it, they give me a sense of tranquility and most importantly, they allow me to have time alone with my thoughts. But recently, I had an urge to ask this question to myself, which part of the solo trips is one that causes their recurrence?

As long as we are talking about solo trips, one more thing I’m a fan of is planning my trips out. I’m not really an on-the-fly decision maker (which if you are, can we talk privately?). I like to plan my trips out, with meticulous detail, which seems to be a little counter-intuitive to me, because as many benefits as these trips provide me, they are not particularly comfortable all the time, but I’m able to manage through them. So, another question I had to ask myself was, why do I do this?

I had to ponder over these points for 26 days, (the number of days since my last article by the way. I am not even going to venture into describing the amount of “discomfort” I’ve had with not writing for this long, but I digress). And at the end of said period I could come up with the following points.

• I only enjoy the part where I’m en route, i.e. while I am on the way. I am much less relaxed after reaching the destination (that is till I do not find a bed to lie down on. (Because, you know).
• A big reason I plan all my trips in advance is to be comfortable throughout the trip. The link is not direct. The sense of delayed gratification, i.e. the sense that I will reach the destination, and I don’t have to roam the streets to figure my plans out gives me a feeling of comfort. (Convoluted, I know.)

But how does comfort exactly work? The consequence of a comfort-inducing circumstance is relief, which could be physical, mental or emotional. But what exactly causes comfort?

If we trace comfort back to its origins, it originates from a sense of familiarity. Let’s think about it for a little bit. We are comfortable only with a specific set of people and there is a trait of commonality among these people. We are extremely acquainted with their responses to our stimuli or the other way around. I know the next question could be somewhere along the lines of “But what about the people we feel an instant connection with? We’re not acquainted with them.”, and it would be an absolutely valid question. We are not Sherlock Holmes (well, not all of us are, anyway). I will attempt to answer this one. On analyzing a little, we will almost always come across one (or more) characteristics of the person concerned that we are familiar with.

Do we see a theme yet? A big source of comfort for humans is familiarity! And we as humans are in love with familiarity and by extension, comfort. Let’s start with a small example. There is a reason I don’t go to extremely high-end, multi-cuisine restaurants, especially after globalization hit (apart from me not having the money to afford even a cup of coffee in such places). The reason is, I don’t even understand the names of dishes. In other words, I lack familiarity, and hence I remain skeptical about the dishes even in an event of someone treating me to free food at such a place.

Let’s look at another such example. When someone starts a new job, there is always a sense of rush that they feel on the first few days. Everyone reacts a little differently to this circumstance, some take in an extremely shaky manner, others in head on fashion, but one thing every single one of us does, including the most introverted, is find someone to sit, eat and communicate with.

What has always garnered my attention is the escape mechanisms we are able to create to avert situations like these, and the most recent one I’ve caught on to is: unless we are extremely comfortable in a particular vicinity, we always prefer our glass buddies than to the reality! This is so fascinating and disturbing at the same time. On the one hand, we have people advocating getting out of the comfort zone, and on the other, here we are, carrying our comfort zone in our pockets. The cell phones we carry are the most familiar article we can think of at any point in time. Therefore, as soon as a conversation gets boring, our brain triggers a message like the following “It’s been over 28 seconds since the status has been checked on social media. There is a possibility of 89,767 likes that have not been alerted as notifications on the phone. It’s better to check it or the stardom might fade away.”

Another distinct development I’ve come across for me is it is difficult to concentrate for very long when I’m expecting a phone call, a text message or an email. So in an alternate perspective, we can state that we are reducing our familiarity with the real world, because (or so that) we can experience an abundance of it in the virtual one. Bear with me for a second. We’d rather talk to the same set of people, whether it’s on the first day of the new job, on a date (which basically is an attempt to familiarize ourselves with someone new) or at social events. The comfort that we have for ourselves, no matter how much, is still inadequate.

So the question, better yet, food for thought I’d like to leave the readers with is, is familiarity actually breeding contempt? Or is familiarity tightening its embrace around our minds to an extent that we are never able to think of the original proverb, ever again?

Thanks a lot for your time and effort to read the whole thing. If you like it, please share it with someone who you think might benefit from reading this. Also, please let me know of any topic you’d like me to write about in the comments section. Until next time, stay awesome and stay happy. 🙂