Enough About Hardship: Instead, How to Navigate Comfort
We’ve been trained to be cautious of the burglar and the devil, but what about our laziness and unwanted habits?
Let’s say you were driving down the highway or sitting on a subway and saw this advertisement?
“Going through the easiest time in your life? Feel like life is just a breeze and nothing is going wrong? Call Us!”
What’s your reaction? How does that make you feel?
Is it something along the lines of:
“This must be a joke.”
“Why would anyone respond to this advertisement?”
Can you feel a hue of anger rising in yourself at the ridiculousness of the proposal?
“Is this business for real?
Are they out of their minds?”
Maybe you’re just dumbfounded.
If you’re like the rest of humanity, including myself, that’s exactly your immediate reaction.
Why? Because it’s our conditioned response. Think about every advertisement we come across, every claim that’s heard over the radio or commercial aired on tv. Consider every conference that’s ever been held and every meeting that’s convened.
What are they doing other than defining the severity and importance of the obstacles from small to large that we face throughout our lives.
With or without our approval, they have become the unofficial dictionaries of our world, our culture, and our expectations. They define for us what we should ponder and they attach every issue, both personal and global with a certain level of urgency.
Before we have a chance to gauge the severity of our life’s condition and status relative to where we are and who we are, our problems are already painted black or white, serious or not, important or not. Unfortunately, the measuring stick has been developed to be determined by the profit left on successful persuasion.
But just because these problems are plastered everywhere does that mean they’re the only problems? Does that mean they’re the most significant issues concerning our lives, the things barring us from our greatest potential?
Of course we’re not disregarding the all-too-real tragedy of sickness, death, addiction, poverty, divorce, starvation, or any other painful and injuring event, but I do want to steal a bit of our attention from the scary, obvious beasts of our time and direct us to something a little more subtle.
They’re more like the small flickering of a cigarette bud or the gradual tumbling of snow on a mountainside.
Did you know that the fires awakened by a dying ember can engulf thousands and thousands of miles? It consumes houses, crops, and even lives. Once angered, it roars and roars and roars until there’s no more to consume. Its flames lick up any effort of human opposition and laugh at water.
Snow depicts an image of peace, of laughter, snowball fights, and hot chocolate. But what does it become when it begins to gather mass and momentum? That innocent snowflake, that slight pull of gravity initiates a transformation that terrifies even the most apt skiers. The descent of an avalanche can be felt in your bones, it is one of the few things capable of shaking a mountain. The sheer force in them is tremendous.
But what do these things share besides the scale of their destructive power?
The innocent and harmless disguise that precedes them.
And what is more innocent, more deceiving than the comfort we live in and the complacency we’re satisfied with? We’ve been trained to be cautious of the burglar and the devil but what about our laziness and unwanted habits?
What about routine and those things we take for granted?
Problems are constant in our lives but a crisis is a different trial. And the distinguishing trait of a crisis is that it was never supposed to have that kind of potential. A crisis becomes a crisis because we had our guards down and we allowed the problem to fester and grow. It comes without notice because we weren’t attentive and we were too busy being secure, comfortable, and okay with life.
And so isn’t it precisely when we feel like our work is good enough that our performance begins to suffer until we’re laid off? Isn’t it when we assume that our wives know that we love her that bitterness begins to grow until it leads to divorce? Isn’t it years of long and muffled oppression of a people that transforms into a revolution?
The problems of life will never disappear, and it’s impossible for us to prevent crisis as well. But I wonder what would happen if we began to take inventory when everything seems to be going smoothly. What if we metaphorically began storing food for the winter and doing a quality check on the different aspects of our thought life?
Whether it’s tackling our laziness, addressing our apathetic attitude towards our families, or even being satisfied with the bare minimum, we have to proactively identify and tag the covered issues. Are we so scared to expose a problem that we’re willing to test our luck with crisis?
WHAT CAN WE DO?
1. Identify things that routinely cause you guilt.
These are indicators of practices or habits you do not agree with or consciously did or did not practice before but now have the tendency to do because of a decreased level of intensity, resolve, or pressure. Dig into the root cause of the guilt and if at the end of your investigation you find it substantiated, then create a strategy to remove it from your life.
2. Find the one resource you’ve seen the greatest change in allocation.
This could be anything but for most of you it will be money and time. Do an honest comparison of how much of your disposable time or money you spent in more strenuous and demanding times versus now. Make sure that the distribution reflects your priorities and that one isn’t larger at the cost of another.
3. Write down your greatest skill. Then write down every way you are working to improve it or are using it.
We should never stop working on our craft because there will always be more to learn and to perfect. Slowing down or stopping reflects a complacent or giving-up mentality that claims we’re good enough or it’s just too hard. Make sure you are putting your skill to use, that you’re honing it through application and learning.
4. Ask yourself, “Is passion a part of your pursuit?”
Whatever your focus is on in this season of life, are you just going through the motions or are you wholly invested and committed? Is there a level of creativity, of intrinsic motivation, and excitement that disqualifies your pursuit as work and categorizes it as a joy or mission? A lot of times, we haven’t actually lost our passion, it’s just been diverted in the wrong direction for a tad too long. And all we need is a bit of redirecting and remembering why we started what we did.
Instead of waiting as an entire society to address the problem once it arises, we need to become a courageous people willing to put off our comfort to secure real and profound peace. This means admitting we don’t have it all together and being more vulnerable, but it also means potentially avoiding huge setbacks in life.
You know, the greatest leaders of history were men and women who lived with the urgency of war in peacetime and thereby had the capacity to channel the sanity and calm of peacetime in war. And this is a feat only possible by those who have engaged themselves in practicing when practice seemed foolish and unnecessary.
Isn’t that why we say leaders are misunderstood and that it’s lonelier at the top of the mountain?
If you like this, check out Anthony’s other writing at ARichJourney.com
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