Divine Discomfort

What a night!

My mother-in-law took the kids for the night, so Shula and I went camping at Achziv up north. Our campsite was right on the coastline. We could see the northern border, Rosh HaNikra, with the naked eye. Come nightfall, we could see every star in the sky, with the sound of the waves gently putting us to sleep. We spent the evening in Acre. All the signs were in Arabic and English. We were immersed in Arab stores, restaurants, language, and scents. This is what Beirut must feel like. After all, both cities hug the same sea, and they are about 70 miles apart. We are closer to the Lebanese capital than to Tel Aviv.

The weather was so pleasant, we didn’t even pitch a tent. We simply laid out our mat and unrolled our sleeping bags.

In the middle of the night, it got pretty cold. I woke up intermittently, shivering here and there. Shula threw an extra blanket on top of me. The morning welcomed us with a layer of dew, soaking everything.

An hour after sunrise, which was beautiful, it got so warm that everything dried very quickly. I couldn’t even remember the cold shakes of the previous night.

“I heard you twisting and turning, Dov. I’m glad you had the chance to toughen up a little.” My wife remarked.

My wife grew up on a small farm in a frontier town in the Soviet Union. She had to use an outhouse for a bathroom, which meant walking outside in the Russian freeze, often at night. She also didn’t have running water. Instead of a faucet, she physically had to pump her coffee out of the ground.

“Discomfort is a great strength. Treasure it.” She smiled.

I couldn’t stop thinking about those words. I grew up in a place where if I’m hungry, I eat. If I am bored, I check the news. If I feel some aches, I take an aspirin. I have the resources to mitigate any type of pain or discomfort immediately by remedy, escape, or distraction. Never did it occur to me that one of the options in dealing with discomfort is not to do anything and let it run its course.

Pain, like everything else, is something sent to us by Hashem as a catalyst to action. If we take away the pain, we dull the message and it is harder to take the appropriate action.

I am not talking about pain where we cannot physically or emotionally function as people. But what if a lot of the pain we feel is something we should best handle in its rawest form? What if, by accepting it, we give ourselves the option to alleviate the pain without the use of TV, internet, smartphones, lots of food, alcohol, or even over the counter medicines?

Here are some huge benefits to dealing with discomfort organically:

1. Complete tasks in a timely fashion, no matter what the adversity. How many time outs do we take from a task to drink coffee, have a snack, or relieve the tension with a cigarette? If we could work through the desire to check email, watch the news, or chat with someone in the office – imagine how much more we would get done in a day? Think of how easily you will crush your next deadline.

2. Broaden your personal horizon. If you are the type of person who thinks he can walk for 2 hours, what happens when you decide to bear the exhaustion and walk for 3? If you can read 30 pages of something before losing your attention, what happens when you force yourself to read 50? If being able to fulfill your diet means not eating the first hour of the day, what happens when you extend it to 2? Once you push yourself beyond your limitations by dealing with the discomfort that comes with expanding them, you can set larger goals armed with a greater capacity to achieve them.

3. G-d loves you. The great blessings in life come when we exert ourselves. Our muscles don’t get stronger from doing the same ten repetitions of weight lifting for five years. It’s that 11^th time, and 12^th time where you have to really exert yourself that causes the increase in body mass. The same holds true for Divine service. It’s not the standard time we daven every day, it’s the additional focus we put into it – beyond the rote recital of the words. Hashem rewards the effort. Exertion can be learning an additional page of Gemara when you are spent. It can be waking up 30 minutes early in the dead of winter to recite Psalms. Discomfort is the dry wood Hashem gives us to spark the effort that will ignite our soul.

4. Toughness Underwrites Conviction. Never in history have there been more creature comforts available to us to remedy immediate unease. As a side effect, our tolerance for sacrificing, for enduring, for suffering for anything noble has disintegrated. How many people today abandon their convictions with a petty justification, but in practice do it to protect their comfort level. Without the determination to endure a little suffering, we too could bargain our beliefs for a piece of pie.

5. When Reality bites, bite back. Let’s face it, life is a series of discomforts. If it’s not physical, it’s emotional. If it’s not emotional, it’s spiritual. A constant state of discomfort is often a prerequisite for a constant state of improvement. It’s human nature to want to be comfortable, so we do whatever it takes to reach, or return to that place of sporadic serenity. Human progress is the ongoing journey to a state of “constant comfort.” We never make it, but we are always moving forward trying to get there. Accepting a little bit of uneasiness is a great way to understand why it’s there, what it does for your physical, emotional, and spiritual improvement, and how these improvements propel you forward in the journey Hashem Commanded you to take.