A Meditation on Discomfort

Are you comfortable right now? Standing, sitting, reading these words or having them read to you does your forehead itch? Do you want to shift your legs?

Observe yourself as if from outside. How frequently do you change positions, scratch an itch, stretch a sore muscle, wiggle your nose or fingers? All of the actions are precipitated by a minor discomfort, a feeling of dis-ease in the original sense. If I cracked my knuckles one thinks without thinking, I would be happier.

When voiced aloud, the desire becomes ridiculous: I want to tense my leg muscle because I just do and I will do it now! But ridiculous or not, the desire is strong and when neglected, only grows stronger. Anyone who has been physically restrained from satisfying such a desire by a cast or brace, by a photographers instruction to hold still, by an arm slung casually around the back of a peacefully sleeping loved one.

Many of these minute adjustments make a sort of sense, biologically speaking. A tickling sensation on one's forearm or leg may be a poisonous spider and should be slapped. It is contrary to survival to engage in a task single mindedly, never stopping, to look around and be aware of one's surroundings. Today we call it a short attentions span; our ancestors called it not being eaten by a lion. The body that is constantly changing positions, tensing and relaxing muscles, shifting its gaze left and right, near and far, is a body that is prepared to run, to spring, to evade.

Our biology imposes this restlessness upon us in a somewhat authoritarian manner. Like breathing, it is something we can do semi-consiously or even unconsciously; but when we neglect to act on this restlessness impulses, our punishment is discomfort, intense and immediate, as if in petudant child were manning the controls of our nervous system.

What is the benefit to rebelling against this enfant terrible? Why take a stand when all that is required to appease him is an eight inch movement of the right foot from here to here? The movement can be accomplished almost before the volition is recognized, But it has never stopped after one adjustment. The body demands another, then another. It may fall strangely quite for an hour or two, as when one realizes has been raptly absorbed in a movie or a book or a sunset for some time without so much as crossing and un-crossing one's legs. Then the demands start again; each one is minor, reasonable, easier to acquiesce to than to deny. But their cumulative effect is to make one a slave to one's own desires, and what petty desires to have as masters!

It is worth standing up to these impulses from time to time because it provides such a valuable exercise in self-control, self-awareness, conscious action. Feeling an itch you may decide to scratch it (but how much deliberation went into this decision?). But then you notice that the itch reappears somewhere else. So when you get the desire to rub your eye, you decide to ignore it. It is indeed difficult, and the enfant throws a tantrum: I'll make the eye throb! I'll interrupt your thoughts! A matronly aspect of your reasoning intercedes: oughtn't you listen to the child? There may be something wrong with the eye that a quick rub will fix. (Never mind that.) Now the ankle and the back of the neck have added their protests: how easy it is to unconsciously shift both legs while concentrating so hard on your eye, a much greater concession than what you were trying to avoid. But the longer you practice this art, the better you get at it. Having found this adversary in your own mind, and learned to consistently stare him down, one of only two things can happen: either his voice will diminish, leaving you in more perfect control of you own body, or he will grow no weaker but you will become stronger, more able to stand up not just to him but to anyone else who makes unreasonable demands upon you.

Walking into this arena of the mind requires many of the same skills as meditation or reflective thinking, but in many ways is its antitheses. Meditation is acceptance, passiveness, release; one who is learning to control one's own body may adopt similar outward pose and use the same skills of inward-looking, but with a different aim: rejection of an irrational hierarchy of obedience, active struggle that like any exercise is invigorating but exhausting, not release but essentially spoiling for a fight, even knowing that one will frequently lose, at least in the beginning.

Contemplating and ultimately stepping outside physical discomfort is a valuable mental exercise, the equivalent of push-ups or mile runs for the body. Incorporating the strengths and self-discoveries you develop in the process can only make you a stronger, more capable individual.