Comfort

What is your source of comfort?

I mean, how do you feel comfortable with yourself? Inside yourself? Inside your own body and with your own thoughts?

Are you comfortable?

I’ve heard myself saying to a few people over the last couple days “to find true comfort, in all areas of life, is perhaps the most important thing.” I would define comfort as an inner calm and overall, an ease of self expression. Comfort feels like acceptance from the inside out.

Environmental comforts are of course worth mentioning. How we define our outside comforts will vary from person to person. Some people rely heavily on external forces to create a sense of comfort. I know for me, I rely on my setting to help me to make changes, that ultimately strive towards homeostasis, or comfortable state of being. I also rely on people for this.

Have you ever had someone comment negatively on a feature or quality of your body? Like when looking at a picture of you, they say, “You’re cheeks look chubby there. You look tired here.” I’m a firm believer that if a person can’t accept something in themselves, instead of trying to improve their own frame of mind, they will hope that another person can join them in the land of self-rejection too. It is easier to let a critical (but unhelpful) comment slip, rather than take time and reflect on one’s own self-consciousness. Nonetheless, these slip-ups can de-rail our sense of comfort with ourselves. It’s important to get a hold of yourself, and really decide how your inner-script is written. This, is the one and only TRUE script. Why? Because we’re telling this story in every moment, to ourselves.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of my experience here in Ho Chi Minh as a roller coaster ride. Yesterday, as I was walking to work, I was even thinking how the wet pavement somehow reminded me of being at an amusement park back in Canada. Only now, was I just reminded of the last time I was there. I had the idea to try and clear my mind and make my body completely limp as I rode the roller coaster. And so I did. As we ascended, I told myself over and over “You are safe, you are relaxed, you are calm”, slumped down into my seat and prayed that this wouldn’t be one of those times that the roller coaster malfunctioned or somehow I slip out of the safety belt because of my jelly-like body. Above all, I had to accept the fact that the roller coaster COULD malfunction, or I COULD slip out and plummet to my death. Literally, the last thought about this I had was, “Well, at least I would have been doing something fun!” Ahh. Freedom.

As the roller coaster reached the peak, and the wheels made that slowed-down, final pull sound, my mind flashed a ‘danger’ alert to my body. But I shut it down quickly: “You are safe, you are relaxed, you are calm.” And down I went, rushing into the sky, the wind slapping against my spaghetti body, my hair tangling around my drooped head. My limbs rose and shook naturally with the movements of the roller coaster car. I didn’t try and stop it - any of it. I just went with it.

Conjuring this memory, I feel a sense of aliveness and comfort, all bundled into one. And it makes me think… Perhaps, the true comfort does come from within. In our minds, in our beliefs and in our perseverance to create an experience that is oh-so-cushy. Even in the midst of the roller coaster ride.