Killing Comfort

Comfort kills.

So many people only experience the weather in brief stints. For these people, the weather is often just a nuisance during a brief 30-second jaunt to the car, which then transports them to work in an office with a chair and a desk. The day is therefore spent sitting in a car with air conditioning, followed by sitting in a chair under air conditioning, followed by sitting in a car with air conditioning again. All environs provide optimized comfort and entertainment. Maybe, at some point, the day involves easy movement in a gym, again with air conditioning, as well as rows of tv screens to combat the boredom.

Even the sun, the very thing that allowed for creation in the first place, is seen as a threat to the body (and industry provides sunscreens to lather over the body as a “fix” to the problem). The sun causes squinting, or sweat, or potential sunburns. Homo sapiens have existed for give or take 250,000 years, and only in the last 100 years has the sun been classified as “dangerous.” Since this odd diagnosis of sun as bad, an industry of “sun protective creams” has emerged.

Living life in a vacuum, the modern body feels plush cushions on the derrière and back while sleeping, cushions while eyes are glued to the television, cushions while eyes are glued to the phone, and cushions while engorging the stomach in a never-ending paroxysm of gluttony (true hunger is rare in the Western world).

The modern brain isn’t bored while browsing the phone for “stimulation”. Boredom should not exist in the modern world because boredom is another potential discomfort. Silence should not exist because silence runs risk or boredom. So kids and adults sit on their asses and TikTok or whatever the hell is the trend of the year.

“But the modern lifespan is longer,” I’m told as a counterpoint. And to that I say, how many of those extra years are actually spent living? Heart disease kills by the millions annually. By 2028 the long-term US nursing home care industry is expected to reach 1.7 trillion US dollars, provided an annual growth of 7.1% (Grand View Research, Inc.).

1/3 of Americans are either diabetic of pre-diabetic. Almost half of Americans struggle to climb a single flight of stairs (studyfinds.org). Even our conveniences become more difficult: the stairs were once invented to make climbing easier. Now the body needs something more automated than stairs to transport it vertically. The modern concept of being alive seems eerily close to the undead version of life in any zombie film.

There is a universal law that nothing is created without having both intended and unintended consequences. The unintended consequences of industry and the drive for growth are simple: an overly-medicated and largely miserable population that cannot process or experience discomfort.

The modern Western human, often addicted to these comforts and the obsession with the elimination of all danger, cannot accept pain, cannot accept suffering, and often cannot accept danger as a necessary component to a meaningful life. Every sickness must have a cure that can be paid for. Erasing all threats is a matter of a savvy Google search.

I imagine myself living thousands of years ago, a persistence hunter, preparing for a hunt via a long run. My body evolved with the capacity to run and breathe with stunning efficiency. My tribe can hunt a deer (or its predecessor) not with speed, but with endurance. There are risks involved with the hunt. We don’t need trendy shoes with arch support or technical gym shorts: we just run. We compete with other predators, and other predators decide whether we humans would also make a decent meal. There are real threats, not the modern vain “what if my car gets a dent or my sweater gets a stain” type threats. My belly is often hungry. My legs are often tired. But ironically, I do not feel any form of depression, not in the modern sense. I focus on my feet hitting rock and sand as the heat pummels me and my thirst for water increases. The deer will collapse soon and hunger will be sated.

This morning I thought about comfort, my biggest existential threat, as I embarked on a bike ride. The temperature was 19 F (minus 7 C). With the wind chill it was 5 F (minus 15 C). The wind lashed me with its ice-coated whips of air as I pedaled toward Grant Farm. The Gravois Greenway was mottled with ice patches that my gravel bike often slid over. One bad fall and my right foot, I knew, would be done for. I slowed a little as I crossed each ice patch. The trail took me over icy bridges, through white-sheeted forest, and alongside bleak highways. Sunlight filtered through the dead tree branches and brushed my cheeks. I pedaled as my heartbeat raced, mile after mile, hour after hour, and I felt life in pain. Time slowed. Two hours on the bike felt infinitely longer. Silence enveloped me, though there was certainly plenty of ambient sound.

I live in the same weather as more than one million other people in the city, but many of them do not understand the full magnificence of the weather. That to me is a great tragedy.

I am finding that as my foot heals, my competitive tenacity is also returning. It is ruthless, the sort that punished competitors as severely as possible years ago and has long-since hibernated, but still lurks within. My inner “Terry Silver”. The type that, as a swimmer, grabbed ankles and twisted them when lapping people at practice. This inner warrior knows that a successful hunt requires ruthlessness and resolve.

I feel cynicism when I think of how the quest for comfort can lead so many into a black hole of materialism that sucks the essence out of the soul. Give me the dragon. Give me the struggle. I have one fear, my greatest fear: an end in a nursing home. Let me be devoured by the dragon instead of a devourer of comfort.

Better to fight the dragon and lose convincingly.

In the Rain

The Saint Louis skies quickly turned overcast yesterday afternoon and the apparently sunny day abruptly darkened. The boiling tarmac of the downtown streets cooled and the flags that hung outside a nearby government building flapped wildly in warning.

I had planned to attempt a walk to the nearest Post Office to drop off some outgoing mail. It was not so much about the necessity to send a package out as it was the ambition to walk. Each day I’m attempting to walk, with the aid of an ankle brace, a little farther than the day before. Each day the walk is a little longer and the pain is a little less, though I still need the brace and I still cannot maneuver steps or curbs without significant pain.

I decided to risk the rain, as I wanted to walk more than anything, so I brought my one umbrella, an old relic of an umbrella that was a gift to me when I was living in China. I strapped on my ankle brace and prepared to stagger to the post office. The umbrella has been through many storms now.

I got to the post office before the rain started. Inside, the only customers were me and a young African American boy of about 8 years old who must’ve been dropping something off for his parents. He had a shaved head and the chubby cheeks of youth that I find endearing.

As we stood in line, sheets of rain suddenly slammed into the street outside. Lightning flashed intermittently in the skies and thunder made its familiar peal. The boy’s eyes widened and I noticed he had no umbrella or rain jacket.

We left the store at about the same time and I could tell the boy was nervous; the streets were flooding quickly and it would require only a few seconds of outdoor exposure to get fully soaked.

“I’m going that direction,” I said, pointing across Tucker Boulevard. “Just three blocks ahead is where my stop is.” I didn’t want to seem like a creep, but did want to offer to share my umbrella for those three blocks. It turned out he was going to the same apartment building. So off we went.

So I held the umbrella in front of us, practically using it as a shield against a charging enemy, as the rain hit from a slanted angle and the wind whipped the rain into us. And what an adventure it was! Braving forward, into the belly of the beast, busted ankle or not. The boy was filled with joy and his grin spread ear to ear; he was loving this adventure and he wanted to move faster, to run. I was enjoying the storm too and wanted to charge ahead as fast as my ankle would allow. The umbrella did little to protect from the rain but neither of us gave a damn.

And the boy sped ahead a little, almost at running speed, and I wanted to will my busted ankle to speed up as well, I wanted to run for this fleeting moment, this brief adventure! And I limped forward a little faster, though I couldn’t run. “Forward march!” He proudly declared. And I did what I could to keep pace.

And in the moment I forgot about the other mundane bullshit that I had left behind, the crap that I hoped would die yet still loomed ahead: the Virtual Meetings, the appointments, the Conference calls, the emails, the adult nonsense that people say is important but really isn’t. For that moment the ankle pain subsided, and I moved faster, into a storm, just me and nature getting to know one another! Though I couldn’t run I felt close, very close… it felt tangible again, running… like it was creeping around the corner, the surprise guest at an upcoming party.

The European pirates of the world, those nomads of a world before technology and the Industrial Revolution and our phones and all of the communication toys that distanced us with their conveniences, those pirates must have lived a much more fulfilling life than the cocooned masses of today.

And what a fun crossing of the street that was for me. I felt joy from being soaked in a storm and relief that I didn’t give a damn about it. It was fun to just maneuver over a flooded street while nature inflicted its chaos upon the overly sanitized masses!

We arrived and went our separate ways and I thought about what I wanted to tell the boy but didn’t say: “Don’t listen to others when they tell you money is everything, college is everything, good grades are everything, nice things and educated jobs are what fulfill you. None of it will make you happy. Experience is important! Connection is important! Don’t follow the herd, pave your own path, be your own person, let herds ignore you or follow you as they may, enjoy adventures, enjoy storms, enjoy walking and running and sunshine and rain! To hell with retirement plans! They are spoon fed to the sheep along with the lie that they will live forever, they aim to destroy the moment and cripple your youth, don’t let those crocodiles devour you, as they only feed on your youth! To hell with anyone who tells you that you can’t exercise without a calorie counter, or that you can’t love someone without first showing them a nice car!”

What joy it was to be caught in a storm for that fleeting moment, and how amazing it felt to have that joy erase my ankle pain. The pain did not return with a vengeance as I feared. Conversely, I feel a little better today.

I am thinking of the ending to Stephen King’s It. Bill’s wife is rendered comatose after looking at It, the devourer of children, an immortal entity that I interpreted as a metaphor for the death of childhood. So in an attempt to save his wife, Bill finds his favorite bicycle from his childhood, Silver. He places his wife on the bicycle with him and they ride down a steep hill together. Bill shares with his comatose wife his favorite pastime. And in the adventure it seems that some life returns to his wife, a sign that maybe there is still some life inside of the vegetable that her body became. Perhaps It can be conquered after all.

I also thought of my grandfather on that Florida beach, many years ago, when he supposedly couldn’t walk, yet somehow managed to run in order to throw a football with the grandkids. What a strange thing the human body is.

Sometimes you just have to embrace the rain.