I recently read Daniel Lieberman’s book The Story of the Human Body.  One key message I took from it is that the human body evolved to cope with discomfort.  I was intrigued then to read The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter which explored this theme in greater depth.

He recounts his personal story of heading out to the arctic to track and hunt caribou, the challenges it exposed him to and the insights it gave him.

Around the central story he weaves chapters with interviews and research on why, as humans, we need to move out of our comfort zone and experience hardship, boredom, hunger, physical effort and contemplation on death.

It made me reflect and make sense of why I have been drawn to challenges such as running marathons, mountaineering, long distance walking and, more recently, ultra endurance bike races.

As Easter captures in the book: “

“Comforts and conveniences are great. But they haven’t always moved the ball downfield in our most important metric: happy, healthful years. Perhaps existing only in our increasingly overly comfortable, overbuilt environment and always obeying our comfort drives has had unintended consequences and caused us to miss profound human experiences.”

The chapter on contemplation of death made me think quite profoundly about how we tend to avoid thinking, meditating and talking about death.

“Existential philosopher Martin Heidegger said, “If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life—and only then will I be free to become myself.””

In 1989 I had a malignant melanoma excised from my trunk.  This event had a big impact on my life thereafter and I now feel I was lucky to have had this happen to me as it immediately connected me to my mortality and made me relish every single day since.  My default to offers that challenge me physically and mentally since then has been to say ‘yes’.  Some of my most intense memories (apart from my wedding and the births of my children!) Are located on mountains and long walks and rides. Who could forget hearing rustling alongside the forest tract you are riding and then a wild boar bursting out onto the path ahead, fortunately running away from you!

I am also taken by the discourse on boredom.

“When we kill boredom by burying our minds in a phone, TV, or computer, our brain is putting forth a shocking amount of effort. Like trying to do rep after rep after rep of an exercise, our attention eventually tires when we overwork it. Modern life overworks the hell out of our brains.”

The avoidance of boredom actually, one might posit, is detrimental to our wellbeing. 

Tolstoy had this great quote in Anna Karenina that says boredom is a ‘desire for desires,’ ..… “So boredom is a motivational state.”

Maybe we need to invent a new diagnosis – Boredom Deficit Disorder?

Interestingly, reading the book has already reframed my perspective on what I do.  This last weekend it was raining and I had a 4hour ride planned as part of my training for some big, challenging events I want to do later this year.  Rather than being dismayed and postponing the ride I embraced the challenge and though how good it was to get cold, wet and tired and how much good that was doing me.  I also cut the ride to three and a half hours once I got too wet and cold!

Intuitively I seem to have been dealing with the Comfort Crisis. Will others?