The Hidden Cost of Comfort: Why Security Can Kill the Soul

Civilization progresses on the back of discomfort, tempered by unrelenting pressure. Nations are birthed through bloodshed, and empires crumble from within. All the while, societies walk a razor’s edge on the brink of calamity—the war for ideas tearing through generations. The blood of combat dripping from upturned swords, hardening men and women, leaving them scarred, yet unyielding. Still, the thought persists: if we can find absolute comfort, our lives will be complete. But the hidden cost of comfort is a slow death, stagnation into obscurity, like the creeping spread of hungry flames bent on devouring your soul until nothing remains.

Does this mean you fling comfort to the winds? Does it mean you invite unceasing misery into your life? Of course not! Life is a balance. Lean too far and you’ll be cast off course, like a ship lost at sea. But holding fast to comfort at the expense of forgoing pain is like drilling a hole in the bottom of your ship. As the waters rise, you congratulate yourself on your work, unaware that your ship is slowly sinking. 

Comfort itself is necessary. Yet, like anything, overindulgence becomes a vice, a cancer rotting your soul. The paradox often reveals itself in the form of apathy: the more comfortable we become, the less alive we feel, and life becomes increasingly mundane. 

The Illusion of Security

Security and comfort are often confused with a sense of permanence. It’s the idea that once you’ve grasped it, wrestled it to the ground, it’s yours forever—never considering the nature of the world, only seeking to ease your mortal discomfort. 

You desire the perfect relationship to banish loneliness, forgetting that relationships are burdened with trials of their own. You seek financial abundance and riches, thinking happiness will abound, only to find that the weight it brings often crushes, squeezing your lungs with quiet suffocation. 

You shy away from death, age, disease, accidents, and injury, and for good reason! Yet, we won’t embrace the discomfort needed to stave off many of the calamities we’re running from. We resist exercise, knowing it’s essential for strength and longevity. We refuse to temper our eating habits. Instead of taking the hard road to generate wealth, we opt for the easy route, embracing get-rich-quick schemes rather than laboring through the trials of building something of substance. We outsource our knowledge and understanding to media personalities rather than seeking the truth for ourselves. 

We watch our dreams and passions fade into the mist while the comfort and security of our streaming services, video games, and talk shows placate us into resounding obscurity. 

The paradox here is that security is needed. Comfort is required. Civilization cannot thrive without it. But at what point do we trade growth and maturity at the expense of avoiding discomfort altogether?

The Hidden Costs of Comfort

If security and comfort are necessary pillars of the human experience, then what are the hidden costs of comfort? Why should you even bother to ask whether you’re too comfortable? The answer is it results in stagnation of growth, erosion of desire and purpose, and the death of courage.

For more on why suffering itself can be the pathway to freedom, read Embrace Suffering and Live a Life of Joy

Stagnation of Growth

Without discomfort, you cannot grow. Muscles only strengthen through exertion. It requires movement and the lifting of heavy objects. The fibers of the muscles must tear before they can rebuild themselves stronger than before. 

Likewise, the brain only grows through relentless learning. The stress brought on by challenging your understanding of how the world works, your place in the universe, and your willingness to admit what you do not know—and in that unknowing, to keep seeking truth—is how you overcome stagnation. This is why Proverbs 4:7 states, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost you all you have, get understanding.”

The same applies to your relationships, finances, and emotional well-being. 

The Erosion of Desire and Purpose 

The fiercest killer of dreams is comfort in the form of complacency. When everything is easy, or handed to you without struggle, the desire to become something of your own dwindles until you’re watching the last bit of flame cling to the wick before dissipating into curls of gray smoke.

You trade the uncommon for the common. Instead of the sound of blood pounding in your ears from the strain of effort, it pounds from the pressure of clogged veins and an idle life. Rather than falling asleep at night, exhausted from the intensity of labor or learning, you lie awake questioning the choices of your life, ruminating on fears. 

The excess and convenience of our times softly strangle our ambitions as we wage an internal war for a semblance of relevance. Anything to feel, anything to be seen.   

Kahlil Gibran named it best:

The Death of Courage

Courage is the strength to face pain or grief, the ability to stretch yourself beyond your known capabilities, and to confront what frightens you. But the further we devolve into comfort, the more we generate mental and emotional instability. This is because we thrive on adaptation. We require challenges to invigorate our minds and bodies, something that demands deep courage from within, whether it results in defeat or victory. 

Instead of exploring outside our comfort zones, we cling to safety. Instead of pushing ourselves to create what others have not, we let fear of rejection drive us to coddle our weaknesses. In place of a hard, sweaty hike up a steep mountainside, we seek the cool comfort and soft couch of our climate-controlled shelters. 

We don’t live. We don’t risk ventures that may exact blood, sweat, and tears. Rather than pursuing our dreams, we outsource them to others. We don’t do the hard things necessary to strengthen our minds and bodies, and as a result, we view life through shades of gray, instead of through vivid technicolor. But running from hardship creates hardship of a different kind—one that leeches into society, exacting the soul of entire nations. History is rife with examples of civilizations collapsing inward by means of excessive comfort. 

As G. Michael Hopf stated:

The Paradox of Discomfort

The comfort we enjoy now was created through the discomfort borne by our forebearers. Men and women risked their lives, often becoming imprisoned, outcast from society, and even martyrs as they fought for the ideas that gave us the lives we live today. There is nothing comfortable about being burned alive or drawn and quartered for your ideas. Still, they stood firm because they believed in something greater than themselves. They risked their lives for something better, and their beliefs ultimately led to the freedom we now enjoy. 

Growth. Joy. Meaning. They come from challenge—enduring hardship, arriving on the other side scarred but alive. The sweetest things in life come from being hard-pressed to the edge of desperate annihilation. 

This idea may be construed to mean physical peril, battle, deadly accidents—but it can be found in pushing your mind and body beyond the boundaries of comfort. Giving birth fundamentally changes a woman's perspective on the world. When the ordeal is over, she experiences resilience like she’s never known. Losing a loved one forces the mind to consider its own mortality, which in turn can open you to a deeper appreciation of life.

Cold showers or ice baths push your mind to the brink of panic, followed by surrender. It requires you to overcome yourself—to stay the course when you want to quit. Fasting. Hours of silence in meditation. Pushing your body and mind during an intense workout.

I know a man who ran four one-hundred-mile races over the course of several months. This persistence, the fervor to overcome, is what sets humanity apart. Yet, we turn instead to a lavish lifestyle. Luxury. As the answer to our problems. 

Choosing Life Over Safety

Your life changes the moment you choose to change it. When you decide to fully embrace discomfort, your entire world will change. It can be as simple as telling the truth in a difficult situation. It’s facing your fears and pushing yourself a little further every day, resisting the urge to lie back in the warm lap of complacency. 

Choosing discomfort deliberately, not recklessly, is how you unlock peace and joy. Comfort will soften your body and mind, but striving through hardships is what awakens your soul.

Until next time.

Josiah

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