Welcome to Ideothetic Flow! A passion project sharing my reflections on life, being a better person and building a kinder world.
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If all goes well, at the time this hits your inbox, I would be in a delivery ward waiting for Levi to be born. To be honest, I feel jittery about things to come. The past 2 weeks were already a handful as we transitioned into a school routine for Joy. I wonder how we will cope with both a schoolgoing child and an infant.
This brings me into my topic this week, on discomfort. We instinctively try to avoid discomfort. This even makes us take irrational actions or subject ourselves to harm.
I am thinking of discomfort in a mental sense, distinct from pain. Pain is tangible, it damages our mind or body. Discomfort is that unpleasant feeling we get when reality is not matching what we want it to be. Even though pain is clearly worse, we don’t always prioritise avoiding pain over discomfort.
Avoiding discomfort is instinctive, we don’t always realise we are doing it, and even think of other reasons why we do it. It takes a deliberate effort to ask what is the discomfort we are running from.
As I type this, I have the urge to look at my phone. It is not as simple as saying I am being distracted from work. That urge to be distracted comes from wanting to escape the discomfort of being unsure about what I type, of having to crystallise my thoughts and put them out there for judgement.
The discomforts we are avoid are often linked to our ego or insecurity. We don’t want to admit that we are not as good as we think, that we have not lived our lives well. We avoid anything which brings us close to thinking about these truths.
Why do I worry about having 2 children? I could talk all day about how much work is involved and the difficult logistics. The real discomfort is admitting that I want to hang on to my personal life, to train, meet my friends, or maybe even advance a career. It is an uncomfortable truth that I am not selfless enough to put all of these aside, that maybe I am not as good a father as I want to be.
We hide the fact that we are avoiding discomforts with rational justifications.
My mother has a part time job, yet I see her working on off days while her grandchildren are visiting. I feel she is wasting a precious opportunity to spend time with them. She says the work is important, she is responsible, and the job pays well. I wonder if those are the true reasons. I wonder if she is trying to avoid the discomfort that she feels irrelevant in retirement, or if she actually finds playing with them boring but cannot admit it.
To mask our avoidance, we might even seek out pain. Overtraining when we should rest because we are comparing ourselves with others. Overworking to avoid confronting the fact that our work is not important. To the outside world, we are gritty, heroic, and strong. We are enduring pain for some greater good. Could we actually be seeking comfort in that pain so that we can avoid uncomfortable truths?
Thinking about the discomforts I avoid helps me understand myself better, and lets me find better ways to address them.
If my solution to being distracted by my phone when writing was merely to “focus more”, I would likely fail. Its rare that we can simply change ourselves like this. Admitting that my distraction comes from avoiding some uncomfortable sensation lets me focus on that sensation instead.
When I realise the discomfort, I can work through whether that discomfort should even exist for me. Why do I feel uncomfortable if someone in Finance is unhappy about my work? Does it matter if someone on instagram has a nicer home? Is it a big deal to lose a game of league of legends? I get a chance to correct my mind, and when the discomfort hits, to be able to move them out of my head before I do something stupid in response.
There are also some discomforts that matter. The discomforts that relate to the things that are important to me. I am uncomfortable if my wife doesn’t think I am a good husband. I could avoid this question by making myself busy with work, or justifying my failings by thinking she is not perfect either. Then, I would actually become a bad husband, with a poor excuse. The only way to resolve the discomfort is to try and be a good husband in spite of the discomfort that I might not actually succeed.
To do this, I remind myself that discomfort is a natural part of existence. There is no right to a purely comfortable life. I must act in spite of discomfort, and embrace the feeling as a sign that I am actually on the right track. Waiting for things to become comfortable will only end up missing the moment.
Things that are comfortable are rarely important or meaningful. Try playing a game where the opponents are so weak there is no challenge or doubt and nothing goes wrong. It gets boring. Games like hollow knight or dark souls are fun because there is risk and uneasiness, followed by the thrill of succeeding.
We can’t learn something new without the discomfort of being a beginner. We can’t fall in love without the discomfort that our life is no longer fully our own. We can’t build anything without the discomfort that it might fail.
Accepting my own discomfort helps me react better when things around me don’t go perfectly too. I accept that I am always far from perfect. In turn I also accept that everything around me cannot be perfect. I’m not always a good husband, but she’s not always a good wife, and that mutuality is what keeps us moving forward together. Every job has its pros and cons. Even at the best restaurants there will be something I like and something I dislike.
The next time something upsets you, or you find some reason not to do something you wanted, ask yourself what discomfort you are avoiding which triggered your reaction. Is avoiding that discomfort making you miss out something important to you? Would your reaction change if you told yourself that experiencing discomfort is normal?
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts, start a conversation, or simply connect over a chat. You can reply this email, leave a comment, or reach me at jameschanwz@hey.com.
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Take care and have a good week!
James