Monday, January 27, 2014

Convenience and complacency

After living on this Earth for almost 39 years (39 next week, actually), I've learned a few things.  Not enough obviously, as I still make more than my fair share of mistakes, and still fail many times when winning should have been far easier.  Perhaps it's not ignorance as much as it is application, as I honestly believe that most of us KNOW all the right things to do and say.  Doing them...the application of said knowledge, is indeed harder than we care to admit.

The lack of application of that knowledge is how we wake up one day, and have to have that little conversation in our head asking ourselves how or why we ended up in the precarious situations we've arrived at.  What choices or decisions did we make, or not make, along to way to compose such an symphony of chaos that bleats so loudly in our ears?  Why is the deafening roar of discontent sandblasting us so viciously that it peels away the protective coating of sloth we've encased ourselves in so heavily?



Comfort doesn't thrive.  It doesn't grow anything.  Eventually, that layer becomes weak and fragile and it won't last.  Your comfort zone is a cozy place to live in, but nothing can mature there.  Everything there stays stagnant, or dies.

Mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, we become sometimes find ourself in this place because we get lazy and inattentive to the problems in our life.  Often times we believe that they will either rectify themselves, or we don't feel like dealing with the drama of rectifying them on our own.  We...just...wait.  We avoid.  We envelope ourselves in patience because "doing" just seems to hard right now.  Too painful.

And there are times we need to be patient.

Indeed, patience is a virtue most of us need to hone and strengthen.  Being patient can be difficult.  Especially when it's something we DO want resolved.  When we need an answer so desperately that it burns away at us day and night, robbing us of sleep and slapping us around with anxiety on a constant basis.

But we know when we are purposely avoiding what is hard.  What will be difficult.

Which is not really what patience is at all.  It's sloth, complacency, and avoidance.  No matter how much we lie to ourselves we know when we are waiting for a resolution that means we don't have to actively participate in the partaking of a particular solution.

We are procrastinating because we understand that only our involvement can cure what ails us, but the pain or dissonance of doing so splinters us.  It unstiches us and turns us inside out.  It makes life very inconvenient.

And we hate that.  We loathe it.  

We idle through our life loving convenience because it makes our life easier.  Manageable.  Doable.  We can coast.  Even if that means we become emotional zombies.  We move, live, eat, drink, and talk via some form of batch processing that we've programmed into our proverbial operating system we call "I".

We stop paying attention to anything outside of "routine".  More so, we turn a blind eye to it.

We hate being inconvenienced because living outside of our rituals or comfort zone generally introduces a state of unknowing.  And unknowing always summons fear.  Fear is not a seat that we generally sit very comfortably in.

It's too small to allow our fat asses to squeeze down into it comfortably.  It pins against our sides, reminding us through pain and discomfort that we are probably too "fat" to be in that seat.  We knew we'd have to sit in a seat such as this one day, but getting full on convenience was delightful and easy.  Our glutton and the feeding from the plate of sloth let us turn said blind eye to such a tiny and inconvenient chair.  We tried to ignore that the chair exists all together, even though we knew we'd have to sit in it at some point.

"I'll cross that bridge when I get to it."

How we love a good cliche to make us feel better about procrastination.

When the chair isn't too small, then it's too big and too vast to allow us to feel swaddled up in.  There's no arm rests within reach to let us relax like we've been accustomed to.  We feel alone in it.  Abandoned and vulnerable.  A seat this big scares the living fuck out of us.  We need those god damn arm rests!  We need the seat to fit properly, like the one we had been sitting in.  We want to get back in our recliner and relax again.  A seat we had ground our own unique ass groove into.  That's what feels best.  That custom ass groove.

We put off doing the things that would make sitting in such a seat a bit more manageable.  Then we are forced to realize that the pain of the small seat or the fear of the big seat exists, because we made a choices that will now force us into one of those seats.

And we hate reminders of our poor choices.  We are forced to ruminate on our poor decisions and can't decide if we hate the god damn seat or the fact that it's reminding us of the fact that we made choices that put us there.

The truth is often a convenience when it's easy.  It's easy to be truthful when it paints a canvas of boastful colors such as wisdom, vitality, assurance, vanity, strength, honor, and beauty.  Whether that painting be about us, or someone else, it's an easy to paint.  Pleasurable.  It's our cozy recliner that we kick back in, or sometimes share with someone we don't mind farting in it.  

When it's wrapped in a cloak of hurt, anger, pain, and betrayal then it can be hard to bestow upon someone we have wronged.  We often avoid the truth when we know that regurgitating it will not only be very painful out of the gut, but painful for the one whose ears it will fall upon.

It's not a small or big seat.  It's a god damn iron maiden we are going to slam the doors shut on, and we get to stand around listening to their screaming and agony while we are forced to accept the title of personal executioner.  The pain of closing those doors on someone we care about is as painful as anything we've ever had to do.  Because we put them in there, and we closed the doors.  And we stand there wondering why we made so many god awful decisions that eventually led us to this place.  We agonize over the fact that someone else must suffer for the things we said or did.  Then both of us are left with scars because of one person's choices.  And that never seems or feels very fair to either party.

Laziness is the base, the very root, of both convenience and complacency.  It plays a major role in what leads us to these places.  Where we are forces to eventually deal with our choices in ways we find to be uncomfortable and unkind.

It's the same factor that causes plateaus in training.  Then we wake up one day and realize that months, or maybe even years have gone by without anything to show for in the way of progress.  Yeah we were in the gym 3 or 4 times a week, and we had an awesome routine and our diet was "pretty good".  But it never made us uncomfortable.  We never really got close to the small seat or big seat.  Everything was still "routine".

The common theme here is "force".

When we stop making choices that redefine us, that make us better, that make us grow we become complacent.  We meld into the stitching of convenience and stop asking the hard questions, because we don't like the hard answers.

The last place you want to be is one where you are forced to give yourself an ultimatum.  "Shit or get off the pot".

How we hate a introspective cliche to make us feel worse about procrastination.

But if we don't, life will make us.  And then we don't get to pick our seat, because it will get chosen for us.  




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