Probably the most important thing I’ve learned running is what I’ll call the relativity of comfort. It probably has another name.
To put it simply do you remember the fairy tale about the princess and the pea? There was this princess who was so refined that she could only sleep on top of a dozen mattresses, so soft and perfect did her bed have to be.
For some perverse reason that I don’t recall somebody slipped a pea between the bottom two mattresses. That night the princess tossed and turned, could hardly sleep, and woke up all exhausted and bruised from the gross discomfort inflicted by the pea.
Well, to one degree or another we are all the Princess. By “we” I mean those of us living in the modern world with all the benefits and privileges thereof.
As human beings we have a baseline of comfort and happiness that I believe is unrelated to our actual circumstances.
If we are mentally healthy sometimes there will be permutations from this baseline.
If our environment does not deviate far from the baseline of comfort, like the Princess we will become more and more sensitive and react with increasing severity to even the mildest deviations from this baseline.
As our level of comfort increases, that baseline increases with it.
The more comfortable and easier life is physically the more traumatic even mild discomfort is.
In modern society we tend to live as a whole in incredible physical ease. Yet, society is very competitive and our mental stress is extraordinarily high.
I think this dichotomy serves us poorly. We have evolved so that our bodies expect mental stress to have a physical outlet. Our muscles tense up when we’re stressed, our blood and heart rate go up, we have all kinds of physical reactions to mental stress.
For the most part we live in physical comfort without a physical outlet to mental stress.
So, in the modern world, we live much like the Princess tossing and turning on her mattresses, waking up bruised because of a single pea.
The obvious moral is to the fairy tale is that the Princess was stupid to pamper herself to such a degree of sensitivity, but what are we to do? Are we to give up the benefits of modern living and return to the caves in order to lower our physical baseline of comfort to a more reasonable level?
If we don’t do something we will be just as physically uncomfortable only more susceptible to deviations.
That princess wasn’t any more comfortable on her ten mattresses after all, she was just used to it.
For me, and for most runners I talk to, the physical exertion of running lowers the baseline of comfort without giving up any of the disadvantages of modern living.
What this means to me is that my comfy chair is a lot more comfortable to me now that I’m an avid runner than it was before I was an avid runner.
Physical comfort is more meaningful and physical discomfort is less meaningful.
The mind follows the body, and I find myself more able to cope with mental stress because it has a physical outlet.
It’s Freshman philosophy that opines that good needs evil to have meaning. But it holds true in terms of mental and physical comfort and stress.
No glass of water tastes or feels better than one after a long run.
Pleasure and pain go together. We have to feel both. If our environment does not produce it, we will produce it ourselves.
Increasing one’s comfort level is a short-term and ultimately self-destructive fix, because it then becomes the norm and we cease to be capable of appreciating it.
The intense exertion of exercise is not exactly painful, but it is an antidote to comfort. Over time it shifts the baseline back to a more reasonable level.
I’ll say it another way. The act of enduring through exercise means that you’re not doing it some other way the rest of the time when you’re not exercising.
Sometimes when I’m talking to nonrunners about running they’ll say “I don’t know how you can put yourself through that, how you can do that every day.”
Having been a nonrunner for much longer than I was a runner I know that the truth is that I am going to feel it no matter what I do. I do not suffer more than a nonrunner, or endure more.
The baseline that they set for their lifestyle is going to include pleasure and pain, comfort and discomfort just as mine will.
So the thing I’ve learned is that it hurt’s a lot worse not to exert yourself than it does if you do.
