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Managing Comfort

Ajo, AZ. This has been a remarkable autumn and early winter. The weather didn't become nice and snowbird-friendly until late December. Since then it has been postcard-perfect.  It was fun to enjoy calm, sunny, and warm days. Of course a yellow light starts blinking in the back of my head when I start to feel comfortable. You can't help but feel that you are becoming soft.

This morning a cold wind is blowing. How are the nearby tent campers liking this? Seeing them reminds me how much I disliked tent camping way back when, and how valuable it is to have a hard-walled box to hide from cold wind. Talking to these tent campers yesterday, and visiting with my house-bound friends a couple days ago, I am reminded how carefully comfort-and-discomfort must be managed in order to make life both sensible and tasty.

To the human animal, comfort is delightful prey that becomes a boring meal. The trick with comfort is learning how to consciously experience it. The best way I know of is to stay on the contested boundary of discomfort and comfort. The right sort of camping can help a person experience that.

It's best to be frugal enough to avoid getting suckered into automatic comfort, gotten by high fixed costs and wasteful overhead. In a house, you just throw a switch, dial in the thermostat, and pay outrageous sums of money for it all, and then you feel nothing (about the comfort per se). Working all through your healthy adulthood in some frustrating or disappointing job to gain the "good things of life" and then feeling nothing when you get them -- that's a real definition of progress for you.

Comments

Ted said…
After a few winters in Silver, who can blame you for seeking a bit of comfort this time? ;)

I never appreciated solid walls so much as I did during last Labor Day's storm at Heron Lake, NM. The drenching rain was horizontal, a tired old tree behind my RV gave up the fight and let itself get uprooted, and every tent in the campground save one was flattened, the wet and chilly occupants fled to huddle together in their cars until morning.

I felt so comfortable it almost seemed sinful.
Andrea said…
"feel nothing"......speak for yourself. I love my home and property. Well insulated and paid for. Cheaper than when I travel in my RV for 5 months of the year....enjoy that too.

"meaningless job" ...I enjoyed working as a nurse in ICU's.

Yes, I feel something....
Anonymous said…
here here and cheers, andrea. we don't need some know it all squatter guy to tell us how we should feel about living in and owning a house, full or part time. It's a nice balance to RV and go home and RV again. your "meaningless" ICU job gave you choices. I hope the "nothing" you feel is worth it.

why the attack on people who don't feel the same way you do, mr blogger?
Ted, I'll bet those tent campers will remember that night the rest of their lives. You never remember the comfortable ones.
Andrea and Anonymous, I added a parenthetical clarifier to the sentence that might have made you get hot. I was inveighing against Comfort, not against Househood.