Comfortably Dumb - part 2: Cold Comfort for Change.
“Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm”
[This is the second part of a 2-piece post. You can read PART 1 here.]
So if discomfort will no longer come to us, we have to go looking for it. This makes it even more uncomfortable. Accepting discomfort is far easier when you have no choice but volunteering for it, that’s something else entirely.
In determining any self-imposed challenge, instinctively this might have us thinking of the big gesture - climbing a mountain or abseiling down cliff-faces. While this is, no doubt, a fantastic idea once in a while, at a day-to-day level discomfort is most readily found just outside your door: the elements.
At Leftfield, we train outside. Rain, hail or shine; sessions are cancelled only in the event of lightning or extreme heat - weather that presents a danger. Otherwise, it's situation normal. To many this seems extreme, but this is not about being macho, or hard-arsed, and I reject (and ridicule) these training philosophies. They could not be more at odds with Leftfield.
The problem is not that it’s raining, or cold or dark. The problem is that we think this is a problem.
Josh Waitzkin, author (amongst other things) of The Art of Learning, on a recent Tim Ferriss podcast, discussed how powerfully we are influenced by how we frame things. I have written about this before and, in particular, the tendency to view something in a manner that is unhelpful at best.
Waitzkin, speaks specifically about raising his son with the concept of 'weather' only - no additional value attached. To help offset societal conditioning of 'good' and 'bad' weather he takes every opportunity to play outside with his son on every rainy or stormy day. Kids, of course, don't need much encouragement. The smell of ozone on the breeze would have had us getting kitted out to splash in puddles and soaked to the skin, if we were lucky. By adulthood, we might sit back and watch a storm roll in or enjoy a rainy day in front of the fire, but to be out in it, by choice, not likely.
Of course, some weather is more conducive to particular events or occasions. I will concede that if you wake to a downpour on your wedding day when you are getting hitched on the back lawn that afternoon, you might reasonably describe that weather as ‘bad.' But a training session is not a garden wedding nor a day at the beach and, above all, we have to remember the context here and what we are trying to achieve. As Dan John says: 'the goal is to keep the goal, the goal.'
Weather is just another training stimulus. You can expose yourself to it, thereby strengthening your resolve, your resilience, your self-esteem and your confidence - all very useful in daily life. Or shy from it, enhancing your propensity to that also.
Rain, dark, heat, cold, wind, on these occasions the real training is done before you even leave the house. The decision to get out of bed and go outside on a morning when you can hear rain on your window will do more for you in your wider life than any set, of any exercise, you will ever do. And the cost to benefit ratio is laughable. It’s raining. That is: tiny drops of water falling from the sky. Not pianos. We have ruled out any threat to life and limb and what remains is, at best, a minor and temporary inconvenience.
If this degree of discomfort presents an insurmountable barrier, how do you think that type of self-limiting thinking will play out in your everyday life? Your brain is a learning machine, and this becomes a practised and ingrained behaviour - catastrophising anything that doesn’t fall inside your neatly drawn parameters. If you will only train in a carefully controlled environment, then all training specifics aside - the methodology, the exercise, tools, sets and reps - when placed alongside those who will accept the vagaries of weather, it's like comparing a WWE wrestler, in all their scripted glory, to Jason Bourne.
Every discomfort, every variable, you iron out, makes you weaker. More vulnerable to everything that doesn't go according to plan. Like life. For the general population, (athletes are frequently required to make concessions), whatever the fitness goal, it must also improve your wider life. Any physical abilities we might enjoy are mere applications that will launch or languish care of a mental operating system. It's a metaphor for the entire fitness industry. Under the guise of improvement all focus is placed on largely irrelevant details: supplements, tools and activewear, while leaving the readily available, game-changing factors, untouched.
Worth noting also that, on most days, this inclement weather is not even out there. But the fact that you're still going out there if it is - that's something you know about yourself all day, every day, and it informs everything you do. The heaviest iron is no match for heavy mettle.
This shying from any difficulty is now so deep-seated, it's openly cited as justification for the moral shame of adding a plastic wrapping after removing a natural one. Peeled avocados have joined mandarins on the shelf with the reassurance that:
“It eliminates the guesswork when it comes to ripeness and any challenges if you are not familiar with peeling and seeding a fresh avocado.”
The cognitive wrangling of avocado 'guesswork', and the physical challenge of peeling and seeding, both consigned to history? Not with the Twitter Sheriff in town. Predictably, this drew outrage - but the question really, is why? Or more, - why now?
What exactly is it about this that is pushing buttons? Are the concerns environmental, or simply the hard truth this delivers about what we, as humans, have come to? Surely we can't be an unpacking the outrage over the fact this might be an economic decision, over an ethical one... How long have you got?
Our laws and etiquette derived from behavioural constraints deemed to best serve the many. The Ten Commandments, in one form or another, are found in every culture on Earth, and for one reason - the interests of the tribe over and above any individual. It didn't take long for the underlying logic of this concept to be usurped in favour of wielding them as a weapon or diluting it so as to be meaningless. Whether through monarchy, religion or politics, the only constant is those in power paying lip service to these principles, while instituting their antithesis. And managing to do so with a straight face.
In recent times, having nailed our colours to the mast of capitalism, we now enjoy corporations, duly required by law, to serve the interests of their shareholders, first. We well know this frequently comes at the expense of the wider community, if not humanity and future generations as a whole and have seen the exploitation of people, resources and ecosystems as a matter of course. If you don't like it, tough shit - buy some shares then.
We have sports brands happy to inspire people on a global scale, exhorting us all to, 'just do it', unless your goal happens to be, I don't want to work in a sweatshop anymore.
The oceans are mired in plastic with some reports that it will outweigh fish by 2050. We maintain artificial climates to ensure our constant comfort, thereby ensuring our natural climate will be even more inhospitable.
These are neither isolated nor even the most damning examples, but then one day, they roll out the peeled mandarins, and suddenly it's:
Woah, woah, woah, what the hell is going on here! Don't you know we have standards?
I'm not suggesting we do nothing, more that we ease up on the self-righteous, faux indignation. It makes zero difference to your life to stand on a social media soapbox and bitch about some supermarket in California having the goddamn temerity to sell peeled mandarins. But if your tweeted outrage also did so much as interrupt one of your tv channels, then what would we hear?
Crickets.
This outrage is just one more symptom. A shallow reactionary emotion that has us shining the light on anybody but ourselves - how convenient. There's that word again. Pointing the finger is easy. But we are very selective in what we choose to shout about, with the primary determinant being, surprise, surprise - our own comfort.
Sure, build a power station anywhere you like - just not in my back yard.
Go ahead, make my phone in a sweatshop so long as I can upgrade every year.
We are very selective in determining the problems that need solving. Or, far more likely when it comes to social media, of looking like we're solving the problem, or looking like we are on the same side of those that are solving the problem, or, at least, looking like we agree that a problem should be solved.
You could fairly point out that I am merely pointing a finger also. You would be right. I’ll save you the trouble of sorting through my recycling to learn that I could be more conscientious, and yes, I own an iPhone. But if you are going to draw a line, then draw it somewhere useful. Somewhere that makes a clear and unequivocal statement about what will, and will not be, tolerated. Somewhere it will make a difference.
The line in the sand was overdue well before peeled fruit made its appearance. Dissections of why empires fall invariably cite an internal disintegration. A society hollowed-out through perversions of right and wrong that ultimately obscure any reference point as to what might be acceptable, or desirable, standards. We might yet add a tipping point of disappearing up your own arse that decides it. Activism that begins and ends with a fierce tweet indicates a deluded humanity jumping the shark. A groundswell of those smoking their own crack that will ultimately become irreversible.
Problems that arise from convenience and comfort have, and will only ever have, two possible solutions - inconvenience and discomfort. The sooner Elon Musk gets us to Mars, the better, because there's nothing quite like an alien planet to put a tick in both those boxes. Here on Earth, either ignorance or laziness has made us fragile to any environment beyond our comfort zone, and increasingly vulnerable while in it. From every adaptation, on an evolutionary time scale all the way down to our personal development on a daily basis, our progress has always been a by-product of challenge and stress.
And whether it ends up being global-warming, unruly AI, a virus, meteor or some other extinction event; in a distant future when a more advanced species is picking through the ruins of our civilisation they will all too readily form one conclusion.
We had it coming.
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth — only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.”