Don’t accept a more comfortable way of suffering

Every day, I realise something is wrong. Maybe it’s in my heart, maybe it’s in my community. There’s definitely a problem somewhere on the internet.

Then, after staring at it, you realise you don’t know how to solve the problem. It feels intractable and you don’t know why.

In her book Radical dharma, the Zen priest angel Kyodo williams describes the problem like so:

As Bruce Lee famously said, “Under duress, we do not rise to our expectations, but fall to our level of training.” Hundreds of years of living in a context designed by pillagers of the land and captors of people – without sufficient intervention – naturally establishes the curriculum of the training to which we fall.

She goes on to say that our ways of living are “forged within the default mindset of” colonisation, capitalism, domination and the forces that turn the planet (and its people) into objects to be used.

Without effort, that default mindset will become the way we try to solve our problems – even if its what causes them in the first place.

Unfortunately, williams argues, the people offering a new mindset have failed us:

Much of what is being taught is the acceptance of a “kinder, gentler suffering” that does not question the unwholesome roots of systemic suffering and the structures that hold it in place.

Think “breathing exercises” or “wellness resources” at corporates that threaten staff with the ever-lingering possibility of mass firings in the form of a “restructure”.

(I once visited an ad agency that had flyers for “psychological services” taped to the inside of cubicle doors in the bathroom, presumably because that’s where people went to break down and cry as they were pushed to work harder and harder.)

You can’t solve a problem with tools provided by the thing causing the problem. You’ll just end up with a nicer version of “bad” that, for a time, will convince you things are improving.

So, how do we go about building a better, healthier world without using the tools making that world unwell? According to williams, we start with ourselves:

Learning to be with suffering as an experience is part and parcel of what it means to live, and it radically alters our relationship to all of life and to the suffering of others. If you are invested in alleviating suffering, whether as an activist or change-maker or someone who’s committed to life because you hear the cries of the world, it’s important to understand that you can’t even recognize the suffering of others without fully acknowledging the despair of your own suffering.

You need to acknowledge the things that harm you. You need to stop protecting yourself in vain.

The risk of (some) self protection

The more you try to protect yourself from the things that hurt you, the more they come to control your life. In his book The untethered soul, writer Michael Singer uses the metaphor of a thorn stuck in your side:

Imagine that you have a thorn in your arm that directly touches a nerve. When the thorn is touched, it’s very painful. Because it hurts so much, the thorn is a serious problem. It’s difficult to sleep because you roll over on it. It’s hard to get close to people because they might touch it. It makes your daily life very difficult. This thorn is a constant source of disturbance.

Touching the thorn causes searing pain. So you’re left with two options:

1. Make sure nothing touches the thorn.
2. Take it out, no matter how painful.

Singer argues that “this is one of the core-level, structural decisions that lay the foundation for your future.”

Stopping the world from touching the thorn is “the work of a lifetime”. Singer paints a picture of someone creating more and more protective infrastructure to stop the thorn from being touched.

They:

• Clear paths in the woods so they can walk safely.
• Build an “apparatus” to wear to bed so they can roll around (and they start marketing the tech for sale too).
• Design another bit of tech “that allows closeness amongst people without actually touching”.

And more and more and more. Eventually, Singer’s person feels triumphant:

Now you can live your life. You can go to work, go to sleep, and get close to people. So you announce to everyone, “I have solved my problem. I am a free being. I can go anywhere I want. I can do anything I want. This thorn used to run my life. Now it doesn’t run anything.”

The reality, of course, is that the thorn completely runs this person’s entire life. As Singer puts it, “the life of protecting yourself from your problem becomes a perfect reflection of the problem itself”. You confuse avoiding the pain of the problem with fixing the problem.

You’ve chased a more comfortable way of suffering.

Comfort is nice, though

The challenge is that comfort is just so damn comfortable.

And it’s not like you’re dealing with something as immediately obvious as a thorn sticking into your arm. Your inner suffering is a sensation running through your body, a thought, a fear, a threat.

So you’re faced with two problems. First, the pain you’re trying to avoid is invisible. Second, each small step you take to avoid pain feels insignificant to you at the time.

• Confront your boredom at work and what it means about the choices you’ve made so far in your life? Nah: open Reddit again.
• Acknowledge the deep stress in your relationship and where that may lead? Nope: have an extra drink or two tonight instead.
• Touch the loneliness creeping around your heart? Never: “vent” by talking shit about people online.

Every act of avoidance feels good because it creates the illusion of control. You’re incredible at bamboozling yourself. You can keep convincing yourself you’re doing the right thing, even as you take more drastic steps to protect your inner thorn.

Loneliness can become avoiding social situations because you’re terrified of saying the right thing. It can become vindictiveness and cruelty. It can become latching onto someone because they make you feel less alone. Then you’re paranoid about upsetting them or them leaving you. Maybe you become jealous. Maybe you start convincing yourself you need to control them.

Rather than acknowledge your loneliness, it’s come to control and limit your life. It expands, morphing into a slew of other problems. And it’ll keep doing so until you remove the core cause.

Fortunately, once you’ve decided to remove your emotional thorn, the task is simple (but not easy): you let go.¹

Joy in discomfort

At any given moment, you’re surrounded by things things that comfortable but will – in the long run – make you unhappy. It could be as banal as doomscrolling or as pernicious as staying in a bad relationship.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the loss of friction in our day-to-day and how its absence deprives our lives of its humanity. I think it’s true, even if it’s over-complicating something a bit more basic: there’s a lot of good stuff to be found in the process of whatever you’re doing.

Look: a lot of uncomfortable things will make you happier or more satisfied than whatever’s more comfortable.

I went bungee jumping a month ago. Terrifying. Wildly uncomfortable, both because of the whole “jumping off a high thing” part and because the way they wrapped my legs was a bit painful.² But it was also incredible. I want to go again.

And you don’t have to throw yourself off a ledge over a pool of water to experience this. Raising kids is allegedly both uncomfortable and rewarding – I wouldn’t know and I’m not planning on having kids but, hey, it gets good reviews.

Having tough convos with people. Telling your friends you love them.³ Going to a new place to do a new thing. Learning something new.

They can all be uncomfortable. They can all be better for you than the comfortable alternative.

Zooming out again

To bring this back around to williams: everything in the last section applies to social and communal issues as well.

It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge the ways in which you benefit from unfair systems. It’s uncomfortable to be told you’re just now realising that the thing you’re mortified about has been common practice for a long time. It’s uncomfortable to learn that you could be the victim of some injustices and a perpetuate others.

So you could do the comfortable thing. You could surround yourself with people who share your incorrect, unjust view. You could reject out of hand the experiences of others. You could make your world smaller and smaller until you have nothing but your security.

Or you could ask yourself a question: what pain is my entitlement protecting?

You could do the inner work to release whatever hurt you’re carrying. You could revel in the act of letting go that change demands of you. You could be uncomfortable.

So, next time you feel discomfort, take a beat. Remember that you’re the awareness tnoticing the discomfort. Use that distance to ask yourself what you’re trying to protect.

Note it (literally – writing the discomfort down can be helpful). Acknowledge it. And try to let it go.

Once you’re done, you get the privilege of helping other people do the same.

That’s one way to change the world.