So what I was noticing is that certain ideas made me uncomfortable and certain ones comforted me greatly, but I wasn't siding with either opinion. If it makes it any clearer, conversations in my mind are rarely one voice, but most likely several, with multi-partisan points of view, making my cranial conversations much more what I would imagine a midnight jailhouse gathering to be like rather than a civilized chat over tea. But the domineering trait that I was picking up was that the uncomfortable ideas were becoming........ less irritating. Dare I say, comfortable?! Quite the oxymoron. But it wasn't that they weren't uncomfortable anymore, but the fact that they were uncomfortable bothered me less.
Which turned my mind to thinking about comfort in general and why I (or you, or people, or creatures in general) need it so much. I mean, what is comfort in reality? " It makes you feel better." Woop. So does caffeine, sugary foods, exercise, sex, good friends, various drugs, spirituality, faith, compliments, revenge, a good hair day, cute shoes, etc. I mean the list goes on for weeks. So what is comfort? What is its true appeal? Which made me think about why we decide we need it in the first place.
Well, for starters, you don't usually notice comfort unless you haven't had it in a while. I think it is the state BEFORE you get the comfort that makes the comfort so worthwhile. Think about it, a really hard bed doesn't really matter to you if you've never felt a soft one. But once the soft one has been tried and you realize how COMFORTABLE is it, boom. Addicted. Comfort junkie. Bed nazi. Now you will forever be cursed to trying to find a more comfortable bed.
And so I believe it is in life. I am almost never comfortable in social situations, I don't take compliments well, and I deal with people hitting on me about as well as the skin on your ass deals with poison ivy. (mental picture) So, a comfortable relationship, whether it be friends, romantic, co-worker, etc. is rare. But I have been lucky enough in my life thus far to have a few friends who I can decidedly place in the comfort zone. And even though I can count them on one hand and may not even employ all five fingers, they are golden to me. Because unlike the bed analogy, rather than be constantly searching for more comfort with people, I can TAKE comfort in the fact that it is indeed possible to have those types of friends. And that knowledge means that when I am driving home at the end of a long day filled with both comfortable and epically uncomfortable moments, I can simply think them out. Notice which thoughts give me the warm and fuzzy impulses of joy and which ones make me long for a dark cave on an island away from people and let it be. The fact that I have found a few places and people to provide the important amounts of comfort to keep me going day after day helps me to be less wary about the innumerable amounts of UNcomfortable moments I know I'm about to experience when I wake up each morning.
And this.
The realization that it is perfectly okay to feel uncomfortable, that in whatever that situation was, you can just sit back afterward and experience whatever that feeling was. Whether you made an awkward comment that came out wrong and didn't get the chance to set it right, or you realized a new friend you thought would become a really good friend isn't that excited about You being Their friend as they initially seemed(so awkward!), or someone said something to you and you sensed a vibe from it that they didn't really mean what they said and what you think they really meant by saying it is not at all what you thought they thought about you( did anyone actually follow that last one??? sorry...) that comfortable or not, it is your life and your day. However you felt about it then, and however you feel about it now is yours to keep. And if you take on this mentality, you may just start to notice the lines blurring a bit in your comfort zones. And after all, if it isn't comfortable, it will probably keep you active, up on your toes and to be good at whatever we do in life, isn't that ultimately what we need? What we want? To really be creative, we have to experience more discomfort than the ordinary person would ever willingly bring upon themselves. And to stay comfortable would be jeopardizing the massive efforts we have invested in trying to make a living in a creative profession to begin with---So embrace the uncomfortable, be bold, and go for it, it may surprise you what you find out there. Screw the princess and her damn pea, there is art to made in the world.
