Make yourself uncomfortable
- May 17, 2015
- 2 min read
I like to be comfortable. I really like it. I like to curl up in my pjs, with my hot water bottle. I like to go into situations fully aware of what will happen, what I can expect, what I need to do. I like to stay in my corner with my mug of tea and walls that I recognise.
But, what I'm learning is that, if anything is ever going to change, I have to make myself uncomfortable. Let's be honest, this world is uncomfortable for more people than it's comfortable for. Let's be even more honest...that's an easy fact to ignore.
As I've been studying this year, I've learned some things that I would have been far more comfortable not knowing about. That 1.5 million people die of TB every year, when it's a disease that we've had a vaccine for since the 1920s and antibiotics for since the 1950s. That development efforts have, at best, been ineffective and at worst, been harmful. That ebola may not have spread so fast if less money had been spent on the miltary and more on public health infrastructure. That human trafficking is rife throughout the world including shockingly close to home.
I had to do a book review last term and just happened to pick up 'When Bodies Remember' by Dider Fassin, a French anthropologist who studied AIDS in post-apartheid South Africa. He bases the book on the concept of inquiétude, a French word that can be translated as uneasiness, anxiety or concern about something. Throughout the book, he tells stories of the people he met - people who were suffering, who were desperate, who had been left with nothing because of a vicious disease and some significant mistakes and ignorance from the government. It is not easy reading. It's definiely not comfortable reading. But I do think that it's important reading.
The reason is this...discomfort makes us move, it stirs us to action. If you are not comfortable, you don't just accept it, you change something. I think it's something that the world needs more of - people who are willing to make themselves uncomfortable for a cause that's greater than themselves, to make themselves uncomfortable in the hope of making someone else a little more comfortable.
So, what can you do to make yourself uncomfortable?
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