Comfort and haste

  • Two thoughts from a read­ing in “My Life in Christ.” There are prob­a­bly many more than two thoughts to be had, but two may be all I have time for. Which is sort of the point, eventually.

    Unfor­tu­nate is he who immod­er­ately loves the com­forts of life, and has sur­rounded him­self with all pos­si­ble com­forts. He will shun every dis­com­fort; he will become effem­i­nate and unac­cus­tomed to patience, whilst the life of a Chris­t­ian is a rough way, a cross, requir­ing great patience. There­fore, Chris­t­ian wrestler, do not love the com­forts of this world, but love Christ, the cross-bearer.

    Now, I know that St. John of Kro­n­stadt can sound like a real drag some­times, as if he rec­om­mends get­ting up at dawn and pok­ing your­self with a stick all day just so you don’t lose focus. But con­sider how extremely far the world has gone in the other direc­tion. It may sound extreme to speak so harshly about life’s com­forts, but how many peo­ple do we encounter every day who have acquired such a hor­ror of dis­com­fort that they are in dan­ger of los­ing their mind?

    The answer for me is: a lot. I know a lot of peo­ple like that. Some that I’ve known really are func­tional insane peo­ple. Their own list of require­ments for not feel­ing any pain has grown to the degree that they abhor most of what is nor­mal, sim­ple and enjoy­able in life. There is no deci­sion for them so small that it can’t be com­pli­cated by a “spe­cial order,” by the need to cus­tomize it to offer them what they used to just want, but now real­ize they need. If you’re around them very long you real­ize some­thing: your com­fort zone can become your prison. These peo­ple are rarely happy with all their com­fort; in fact, they’re usu­ally fight­ing a kind of des­per­a­tion and not fight­ing it very suc­cess­fully. I think any of us have the seeds of this in us. The lit­tle steps that begin with “I’d pre­fer not to” (like Bartleby the Scrivener, for you Melville fans) to “I hate to” to “I can’t” are small and the way can look decep­tively … comfortable.

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    From the same reading …

    Unfor­tu­nate is he who loves haste — he will meet with a mul­ti­tude of obsta­cles, with thou­sands of unpleas­ant­nesses and inward restric­tion through his haste, and he will have many causes for irritation.

    These days, when my work causes me to spend long hours in front of a com­puter, this kind of thing seems appar­ent on an hourly basis. Com­put­ers bring with them a unique kind of frus­tra­tion that tests your good will all the time. They are SO smart that they can do thou­sands of cal­cu­la­tions a sec­ond with per­fect accu­racy. They are SO stu­pid that you can’t tell them “Stop” or “Go,” or ask them what they want. They’re fast in a way that we didn’t even know existed 100 years ago, per­fect in a way that no human being can ever be per­fect, but with their lightning-fast accu­racy comes a chal­lenge for us slow, inac­cu­rate humans. Com­put­ers and all the other tech­no­log­i­cal won­ders we can’t live with­out can frame our lives and change what we expect out of life itself. How fast should we be able to cross town or get our gro­ceries? How much time do we really need to, you know, just chill out, just veg.

    Don’t get me wrong: I’m as fond of chill­ing and veg­ging as the next man. But St. John doesn’t ask what we’re fond of, he asks what we love. When he said back here that some peo­ple make their whole life into a jest, it wasn’t amuse­ment as such that he was denounc­ing but the obses­sion with it that we are tempted to (which is why I didn’t mind run­ning a lit­tle otter video in my next post). We don’t seem to be able to be very mod­er­ate these days. But then, it may not be a recent prob­lem. The Lord told us that we can’t serve two mas­ters, and at the time He said it, the con­cepts of “com­fort zone” and “tech­nol­ogy” were both a long way off.


    Related posts:

    1. The destruc­tion of hearths
    2. Keep­ing offenses in perspective
    3. Do you know your Ado­ra­tion from your Exaltation?
    4. An addi­tional Cross-word
    5. C. S. Lewis on the love of God

    June 17th, 2008 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 06.17.2008

    That’s in my “To read” pile, maybe I’ll take it on dur­ing the Theotokos Fast.

  • –c

    It’s a bit chill­ing to notice how eas­ily I see myself in both of these thoughts.

  • s-p

    The prison of com­fort is so much a part of the lives of the clients I deal with on a reg­u­lar basis. An ugly divorce years ago forced me to con­front how much I was attached to a “lifestyle” all the while deny­ing that I was into “stuff”. Now I have “stuff” again. but hope­fully it is no longer an anchor but just bless­ings. Nice post.

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