From Comfort to Happiness and Back

I just got back from one week up in the wilderness of the Swedish mountains; a remote area with no cellular reception, no artificial entertainment and no firewood. It was just me, the mountains, the tundra-like ground and my tent.
Walking roughly 130 kilometers, spread out over a week, with a heavy backpack and rocky trail really sets your mind in a meditational state where you just autonomously set one fot in front of the other until you reach a promising overnight location. Heavy rain, temperatures around 10 degrees and endless rivers to cross buries you even deeper inside your mind to forget about the external elements that does everything in their power to keep you from being dry and warm , or what we call comfortable.
Walking about in this environment got me thinking about that word, and what it actually means. Comfortable is such a relative word, that it’s almost impossible to use without a comparable situation. You could be comfortable in your big, soft couch after a long day in the office chair. You can be comfortable in the office chair after a rough week of traveling, or you can be comfortable out walking after a lazy day in the couch. There is always this next level of comfort. I found my comfort when I took a five minutes break, leaning forward to release the pain from carrying the backpack on my shoulders and hip.
The word that changes meaning over time
So, being comfortable means that you feel good, right? It’s easy to draw that conclusion, but being comfortable can actually be what makes you NOT feel good. That’s the paradox; becoming comfortable makes you feel great, staying comfortable can make you feel bad.
Imagine hanging around in the couch all day. Reading a good book, having a cup of tea, chewing on some candy. Nice. Imagine doing it for a weekend. Quite nice. Imagine doing it for a week. Couch potato. Compare that to spending the last day of that week repairing your car on the driveway in heavy rain and then sliding down in the couch and having a glass of wine. Which would make you feel more happy? Same couch, same comfort.
Today we confuse being comfortable with being happy. The irony is that you never feel truly happy if you’re always comfortable. That goes for psychological comfort to, or what we call our comfort zone. To be able to enjoy the satisfaction of being comfortable, you must dare to be uncomfortable. Many of the happiest people I know are not those who have a lot of money, countless gadgets and infinite comfort. Au contraire, they tend to be quite unhappy. The happiest people I know are those not afraid to take on an uncomfortable challenge. It can be something easy, like riding a bike to get groceries despite of the rain or going to the gym even though the couch is so nice and comfortable. They do it because they know that the temporary uncomfortableness will give them a good kick of dopamine to make them feel good after having completed the task, and going back the the comfort of the couch will be a whole different experience. Additionally, that cup of tea will probably also be the best they’ve ever had.
