Skip to main content

The Cost of Comfort

Mainstream American culture is addicted to security, convenience and comfort. Ads of all kinds bombard us endlessly, promising products and services that will please, excite, satisfy, comfort or reassure us just the way we like. In short, they're selling a fantasy. Life is not always comfortable, secure or convenient. It is often messy, uncertain, fragile, confusing and unpredictable.

 What is the cost of our dependence on comfort, security and convenience? In addition to the strain on our wallets, what is it costing the earth, our bodies, our communities, our souls?

 I don't want to get extreme about this, but it might not hurt to allow myself to experience a bit of discomfort or to live with a minor inconvenience rather than buy something to "fix" it. If consumerism is the belief that the solution to every problem or the fulfillment of every need ends with a purchase, I could try instead to imagine solutions and satisfactions that don't involve acquiring another product.

 A small example that I've recently begun experimenting with is turning to my public library, rather than to Amazon or even a local bookstore, when I want something new to read. The selection may not be as vast or eclectic, but the books are free and only temporarily take up space in my home. Plus, I believe there is actually a benefit to the limitation of choice. Since consumerism entails the proliferation of preferences and the cultivation of discontent, any attempt to limit my options and accept what is offered can gradually uproot these insidious tendencies and teach me appreciation and gratitude.

 And learning to be appreciative and grateful can bring true comfort when life's inevitable challenges come my way.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Casual Holiness

About a year ago I was on my way into a church to attend a meeting. As I approached the door I passed a woman sitting on a red, overturned milk crate near the door. She had dark hair, and she was leaning forward, her bottom coming off the crate, her hands reaching just off the edge of the sidewalk and toward the asphalt of the parking lot. She appeared to be slowly falling forward, tumbling off the crate in slow motion. I had stopped to hold the door for a man who was entering the church just behind me, and as I watched, he approached the woman on the crate. "Here's two of them," he said, handing down a carton of Marlboro Light 100s. "Have a good day." I realized then what the man with the Marlboros must have recognized immediately: the woman had no doubt been reaching for a discarded cigarette butt that someone had tossed down on their way into the church. I felt awed by the man's simple act of compassion. Without the slightest trace of judgement or distast...
2 comments
Read more

A Living Body of Poetry

Reading and listening to the news makes the Psalms come to life. Children threatened with separation from their families, international tensions, indigenous people displaced from their homeland. Even in this too-brief sampling of common headline topics a person can find plenty of reason, as the psalmist did in his own context, to shake a fist at heaven, tear one's garments, beg for mercy and cry out for justice. When I am caught up in my own mostly comfortable life, the Psalms are hard to reach, both their anguish and their ecstasy remote from my daily grind. As soon as I graze the surface of human suffering, however, the words of the Psalter become vivid, potent, a living body of poetry pulsing with human feeling and desire. Here is at least one good reason to read both the news and the Psalms: to remember that I am part of the human family, which is also to remember my responsibility for the welfare of that family.
Post a Comment
Read more

A Sabbath Day

I am thinking of the mulberries we picked today,           nearly black knobby fruits,           their juice spilling so easily from thin skins. I held a branch down while you picked them double-fisted,           dropping them into the empty bottle where they crashed,           spurting tiny jets of juice. The girls ate them by the handful,           stuffing the dark sweet berries into their small mouths,           purple smears like bruises blooming on their hands, legs, cheeks. We had hoped for ice cream but were foiled,           and returning from that failed trip           we found the trees, dangling their fruit in offering. We ate, and it was good. It was very good.
1 comment
Read more