Episode 167 - Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable...

On the boards at Manchester Velodrome: terrifying, exhilarating...just before crashing.

The Thursday Thesis  - 05/09/2019


Comfort will drain your life of all meaning.
Comfort will make you irrelevant.
Comfort is your sworn enemy.
Comfort will kill you,
Stone dead.
 
I was talking to a lady a couple of days ago - you know, all about life and stuff. She’d had a successful career and was looking forward to a “comfortable retirement” in a few years.

That seems such an old-fashioned image: drifting off into a quiet life of pottering around, fading by degrees into invisibility, a thirty-year waiting room before the last, long, lie-in.

There’s something deeply offensive about the word “comfortable”, at least to me.

There’s a suggestion of irrelevance, of ineffectuality about it.

Humans are built to strive, learn and grow – it’s what really makes us tick.

If life is comfortable we are likely to become unhappy as we lack obstacles to overcome, challenges to meet, dreams to capture and dragons to slay.

There seems something disturbing about being comfortable – a curious sense of drifting and lack of purpose. It’s probably just me, projecting my own hang-ups onto the word.

But I would hate to be comfortable.

In fact, I shudder when I imagine having no reason to get out of bed.

Reason tells me that if I’m not busy growing I’m probably shrinking, because only making a demand on our bodies will stimulate growth and repair.

Without stress, without challenge, we may not even maintain our status quo.

I’m not ready to shuffle off into someone else’s dream of a comfortable retirement – are you?

That’s an old dream, peddled by people who were sold it themselves, only to find it hollow when they got there.

Get uncomfortable.

Do something that takes you outside of your comfort zone.

Push your boundaries, because they are shrinking in on you every single day, whether you like it or not.

If you don’t push back, you’ll shrink and fade away.

Keep pushing back.

Get busy doing that thing you’ve always wanted to do – you know which one I mean, don’t you?

It’s the thing that scares the living crap out of you: maybe it’s learning to play guitar, run a marathon, start a business, leave your job.

You know I’m talking to you, in particular, don’t you?

The time is now.

This is your moment.

This is your life ticking away.

Only you are standing in your way, because The Universe is too big, cold and indifferent to care about you, one way or the other. In fact, The Universe really doesn’t give a fuck about you, so get over it and get uncomfortable doing that scary big thing.

Get out of your own way and do it.

Don’t get comfortable.

 
© Neil Cowmeadow 2019
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Neil@cowtownguitars.net