Zen, Jeans, and the Art of Comfort
Why is it so hard to find a comfortable pair of jeans?
One size is a shapeless heap, and the next is a constricting python that leaves you gasping for air. In her pursuit of ideal denim, Goldilocks finds herself trapped in a denim purgatory. This frustrating quest highlights the nature of comfort — universally desired yet difficult to define.
A few years ago, I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," a manifesto on the essence of quality. I don't claim to be as profound as Pirsig, but the book got me thinking about another difficult word to define - comfort.
Like perfect-fitting jeans, we know comfort when we experience it, but capturing its essence proves elusive. Language is a marvelous invention of humankind - with just 3,000 words, we can navigate 95% of written text. But there are some elusive words that defy easy description: words like quality and comfort. The more you mull them over, the slipperier they become.
At its core, comfort is a state of ease, contentment, and security. It's the broken-in softness of a favorite armchair, the rhythm of a rocking chair's sway, and the soul-warming taste of a favorite meal. Comfort is connection — reminiscing with old friends, cuddling with a loved one, and returning to the welcoming arms of home.
Comfort is a damn good thing — an effortless joy that makes life worth living. Yet oddly, incessantly pursuing comfort proves self-defeating. Allow me to elaborate.
Consider those lured to a picturesque beach by dreams of endless relaxation. Initially, they find solace in the sand and surf's beauty. But as the novelty fades to normalcy, they begin taking their paradise for granted—that which once-inspired awe becomes a mere backdrop. When everything is always comfortable, nothing is.
Herein lies the paradox: to expand our capacity for future comfort, we must venture beyond what's currently comfortable. Imagine your comfort zone as a sphere. You expand its surface area every time you push beyond its current boundaries. This increased surface area represents a broader range of experiences, people, and situations you now find comfortable. In other words, temporarily embracing discomfort increases your capacity for future comfort.
If we exclusively do what we already find comfortable, life stagnates into tedium — but by embracing new foods, friends, places, and challenges, we multiply our opportunities for future fulfillment.
I experienced this firsthand while scuba diving during an Air Force deployment to Guam. Those first training dives triggered a primal panic as I forced my lungs to breathe underwater. Every instinct screamed to shoot to the surface despite the oxygen tank on my back. But with repetition and determination, the alien became familiar. Now, scuba diving opens up a whole new world of adventure. With each dive, I marvel at the beauty of vibrant coral reefs teeming with colorful fish, graceful sea turtles gliding through the blue, and shafts of sunlight dancing on the sandy floor. Scuba diving has expanded my travel possibilities and given me access to moments of transcendent beauty and connection with nature that I never imagined.
Or take public speaking—something I now relish but once dreaded intensely. It took countless awkward, anxiety-ridden repetitions to turn that discomfort into the confident ease I now feel giving toasts or podcast interviews. Had I avoided that discomfort, I would have forfeited the joy and connection public speaking now brings me.
In this regard, comfort, akin to success or happiness, eludes those who relentlessly pursue it directly. The renowned psychologist Viktor Frankl, who survived the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, understood this paradox. In the preface to his book "Man's Search for Meaning," he writes:
“Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”
So, while the perfect pair of jeans may forever elude us, we can find true comfort by embracing the discomfort of growth. Just as breaking in new jeans requires a bit of pinching and squeezing, breaking in a more fulfilling life requires enduring the temporary discomfort of new experiences.
By venturing beyond the comfortable, we gradually transform life's challenges from constrictive denim prisons into the worn-in, perfectly fitted jeans of our most authentic selves. Comfort, it turns out, is not a destination but a byproduct of our willingness to grow.
