The sky outside the windows is covered in thick grey, making it impossible to tell with certainty whether it's 11 am or 4 pm. The wind moves the trees back and forth in a staccato dance, occasionally, thrusting a branch around in the air. The raindrops blown against the window glass paint an abstract work of art.
In short, it's the epitome of North German weather, the kind everyone tells you is the reason for North Germans' inner coldness and lack of humour (both of which I'd refute).
It's cosy sitting inside, observing the crows flying back and forth between the increasingly bare branches of the trees, wondering what they're chatting about.
But it's Sunday, and my cake cravings aren't satisfied with the odd dry cookie I discovered at the back of my kitchen shelf.
The typical urban elite dweller in such moments would reach for their phone, open the delivery app of their choice, and get an other to put up with wind and weather. Couldn't be me.
Besides, I live in a small town where delivery options are limited, and the Cafes get by without offering such service. Even when living in bigger cities, I've not felt the need to order cake; it just seemed too ridiculous: a 5 EUR piece of cake + 4 EUR of delivery?!
Wrapped in two layers of clothing, complete with a rain jacket, hair kept in place by a hat, armed with an umbrella, I stepped out to venture to one of the few bakeries still open after 13:00 on a Sunday.
My field of vision limited to the 5-meter stretched out underneath the black edge of my umbrella, enough to avoid crashes, not enough to see how much distance I have left to cover. The changing direction of the wind tugging on the umbrella, requiring my full focus to try to angle it such that it would not break.
All five senses engaged to spot dangers, and break the raindrops' trajectory to avoid them hitting my glasses -- one of those things you realize when wearing glasses, rain on them is really not fun.
Sounds like a maximally unpleasant Sunday walk, right?
And yet, at some point, despite the annoyance caused by it, I also felt alive, asserting the edges of myself against the forces that are, and will outlast me, and probably the whole of humanity.
The gaze forced to look on the ground, observing only the next 5 steps ahead, weirdly meditative; and every time I decided to look ahead; surprised at how far I'd already got. The colorful leaves swimming in puddles, covered half in mud, entertaining enough.
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Nao
Once inside the bakery, I was greeted by a great selection of cakes, among them my absolute favorite —a hit of joy that's impossible to replicate by endlessly scrolling through menu items.
Sure enough, you can get very unlucky during a Sunday bakery visit, but that's part of what makes it so rewarding when you don't.
On my way back, two rays of sunlight stole their way through the cover of clouds as if to bestow their gaze upon me as a little reward.
I bet the cake tasted a million times more delicious than if I had just ordered it to my doorstep.
The contrast between the wet, windy outdoors was the reason I could appreciate my candle-lit, warm apartment all the more after.
This goes against what the hedonists and pleasure maxis will tell you. They say we need to get rid of all inconvenience. They say, we'll all be happy once we are cocooned off into pleasure. Into never having to put up a little fight, into never facing any resistance.
Part of why Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World are so dystopian is that they drive this idea to an edge. The people in there don't have much discomfort to put up with; they can just sit in their salons surrounded by the fake family entertaining them through their screen systems or consume a bit of Soma to never feel bad again.
The trade-off? Robbing themselves of the negativity, they also rob themselves of the ability to feel true joy.
Is it any wonder that the chronic disease of our times is depression, even if we supposedly all chase happiness and have all the more tools to get it?
Depression isn't really about feeling sad. As Erich Fromm reminds us, it's a state of numbness, an inability to feel, a lack of motivation, a sense of having no connection with the world.
As such, the opposite, happiness, might not be as suggested, just never feeling bad; it is instead the ability to sense the ups and downs, and be resilient enough to cope with them.
Take the world of Psycho Pass, an anime set in future Japan, where people are presumably quite happy. Everyone has a Psycho Pass, measuring their emotional state in order to maximize their "well-being" and detect crime before it happens.
A society that has traded freedom for security.
Everyone whose Psycho Pass shows tendencies toward criminal ambitions is caught, and if the crime coefficient is too high, they are simply executed on the spot. So far, so good.
Enter Akane, a new investigator with a remarkably resilient Psycho Pass and her own sense of what's right and wrong. She does not simply obey the dominator (the system's guns that measure and execute).
Still, she quickly realizes that... people's crime coefficient also shoots up in traumatic situations—meaning, when they are overwhelmed by emotions such as terror or fear. There are countless cases in which she relies on her judgment instead of doing the easy thing: blowing up the supposed latent criminal (It's comical how the Sybil system figured that the best way to deal with criminals is to literally make them explode... how's that good for the mental health of everyone around?!)
It's not so dissimilar to Brave New World, with medication for those whose Psycho Pass is edging into a danger zone.
No wonder such a world gives rise to its own kind of villain: Makishima Shogo, a brilliant criminal, versed in classical literature, and set on unmasking the system that claims to want the best for people.
He realizes it creates shallow, empty beings, void of reflection and the ability to make their own value judgments.
Makishima rightly points out that the removal of all stress and discomfort is not, despite common belief, only virtuous.
"For some time researchers have understood that moderate stress has benifical effects. It boosts the immune system for example. Stress motivates and prepares us for action. It compels our body to survive."
- Shogo Makishima
Intuitively, we know this.
The moments we felt most accomplished were rarely those where we chose to maximize pleasure.
The memories we look back on with rose-colored glasses, while in the depths of it, were quite often not fun at all to be in. In hindsight, I can laugh at the small-minded one-man CEO who had to yell at the 25-year-old me when he ran out of arguments.
I chose the hard thing to do in that moment. To speak up for what I believed was right. It cost me my job, but at least I got to live on with my conscience intact.
In Psycho Pass, people are robbed of the hard decisions. They're told what job is most suitable to their emotional state, and who to marry. They've come to see it as a privilege, a comfort, with some wondering "how the hell did they manage in the old days."
There's no need to do hard things. And yet, while some live blissfully unaware of the cost incurred, the likes of Makishima, disappointed by what has been done to the human condition, rebel. In their own, cruel ways.
It's impossible not to feel sympathy for this villain, who's driven by despair over the loss of humanity and connection.
Not so dissimilar to the world we live in, where all our connections have been flattened into the same device. Messages to my mum living next to advertising push notifications.
It's very comfortable to send all those messages to all those people, to collect all those connections... deluding oneself into thinking one has a thriving social life, when what's often happening is a simulacrum of real connection.
We're still creatures of the realm of the real, embodied selves. As such, without occasionally getting out of the comfort zone to help them move, listen to their complaints about their on-/off relationship, get into passionate disagreements, and still stick through it... We'll not be rewarded with other significant others (as Alain de Botton puts it).
"We are lonely because we are refusing to accept as genuine those cheap, counterfeit images of friendship promoted by a sentimental world keen to disguise the challenges of real connection. Those who feel a lack of friendship most deeply may simply be those who cleave most intensely and sincerely to its genuine promises."
- Alain de Botton
Ease is not the goal, friction not the enemy.
The discomfort of opening up to someone new = the only way to ever achieve true communion.
"Without vulnerability, there can be no compassion or depending on another."
- John O' Donohue
It might be that the constant pursuit of ease, of frictionlessness, has caused the nostalgia epidemic, people longing for a past they've not lived.
Everything, everyone being available at a scroll.
No more need to think, to remember, to write yourself.
You can outsource all of that.
And then we wonder why the world online feels so fake.
Why is it that nothing really moves us anymore?
It might feel good in the moment, but in the long run, it's hurting us.
In an economy where everything constantly wants our attention, one of the hardest things to do is to opt out. To say no. To do nothing.
Because only then does the space open up to do meaningful things.
Often, these involve discomfort. Doing a hard thing.
It's the effort it takes to create something that makes it valuable.
This is why we admire musicians who play the hardest pieces seemingly effortlessly.
Imagine this entire essay was just spit out by an AI. How would you feel then?
It's the same question Bas Kast explores in his essay, trying to answer how to learn to love the ice baths of life.
He answers that he, as the author, wants the struggle for the words, the painstaking attempt to encroach on just the right phrase to express what he's feeling.
"It's the resistance and hurdles that make our lives valuable. They give us the chance to grow. They offer us a unique opportunity to show ourselves and the rest of the world what we're made of."
Bas Kast
Every writer will tell you, writing is not that much fun. It's hard to start, it's hard to keep at it, and it sucks reading your own writing later on and cringing at it.
But sometimes you are rewarded with that feeling of... resonance, of getting somewhere you did not foresee arriving.
Perhaps, the way to break through the glass wall between us and the world is discomfort.
It's the walks in the storm you persisted through, the sitting down in front of a blank page and pushing through, the feeling your fingers fall off holding while practicing the guitar, the stopping to wait for your own turn to speak, and instead listening with all your heart to a friend.
We're creatures of contrast.
Without resistance, how can we know where we end? How do we get a sense of making a difference?
If you're never in pain, you never know how good you have it living pain-free.
One of the funniest things to me is still the number of cars parked in front of gyms. People set on doing a hard thing, training their muscles, but they can't put up with the discomfort of cycling or walking there.
(I've lived plenty in non-car-centric areas)
In our chronically online age, there's one discomfort well worth putting up with: FOMO.
It's been one year since I radically reduced my screentime outside of work, removed Instagram from my phone, forced a 1-hour lock, and generally tried to train myself to engage in other activities instead.
I'm often asked how I manage to read so much. It's simple. I just do. It's a question of discipline, book availability, and of telling yourself you're the person who can do this.
Reading classics is hard. This year, I read Thomas Mann, and it took me about 400 pages to actually get into the story. I could have just thrown it out at that point, but I didn't, and now I regret nothing.
Another secret is not depleting your happiness hormones elsewhere.
As much as tech bros talk of abundance, they can't change our biological reality. If you've ever taken ecstasy, you know the highs followed by a slump. After all, when serotonin is released, it takes time to refill the tank.
Once dopamine has been spent on the joys of online shopping, the depleted brain will no longer feel able to read classic literature or engage with a difficult concept. You might look at the beauty of the world outside and feel nothing.
One aspect of the constant pleasure/comfort-maxing is certainly that one's resilience drastically declines. When you never do mildly uncomfortable things, the slightest inconvenience can push you over the edge.
According to my YouTube feed, the US, for example, has a road rage problem. I wouldn't be surprised if, in part, it's because people do not have much resilience to deal with slight discomfort anymore.
One doesn't have to go over the Atlantic either. Yesterday, as I was crossing (it was green for me), I nearly got hit by a car turning right into the street I was crossing. By all measures, drivers are not supposed to endanger pedestrians, and the rules are clear that when turning, you have to wait.
And yet, they nearly hit me and figured that... I must be the issue, honking at me. I could have struck back, but honestly, what's the point? I just walked on and let them be.
Maybe they just had a bad conversation with their boss and were in a horrible mood. Maybe their girlfriend just broke up with them. You never know what others are going through.
That's the thing I realized as I decided to spend less of my dopamine on scrolling and online shopping and instead chose to do the difficult, exposing myself to the discomfort of a walk in the rain, a tough philosophical read, quitting alcohol in a country with an alcohol problem.
I have the capacity to be more generous towards others in such moments, and even when bad things happen, I'm a bit better prepared.
The discomforts of pushing through get me a step closer to the freedom David Foster Wallace speaks of in his This is Water speech:
"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."
Without darkness, you can't see the stars.
Why would it be any different with the great joys and pleasures in life?
Thanks for reading 💚
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All comments (4)
Figured I should maybe write a lil again so here are some thoughts on why putting myself through minor and bigger inconvenience is actually a good thing.
loved it once again, Naomi!!
@naomiii 's blog reminds me of how how much i want to spend time at the Hamburg train station, eating those sweet and savory rolls and writing short fiction https://paragraph.com/@cryptonao/discomfort
haha it is not a comfortable train station :'D