Words Zahabiyah A.
Digital Art Alifiya S.
I’ve recently been wondering if comfort is a necessity or a luxury. I fall on both sides of the fence every time I approach the question and truthfully, it can and should be both. That sounds like a failure on my part to sufficiently map out the worth of either side, so much easier to say anything works but truly I don’t think life would be possible if comfort was only necessity or luxury.
I don’t like very sunny weather. Once in a while, it’s nice, but largely it’s just annoying. Hot and bothered, sweaty and lethargic, suffocating in fake cold air or heady, thick heat, I mean it’s so uncomfortable. I prefer seasons, always, for the challenge, not the annoyance, of change. Will it rain, will it pelt it down, drizzle, aggressively attack you from the side so your umbrella is useless, come with piles of wind so you can’t move freely, hurt your face because it’s so cold, or because it’s oddly spikey? I love the cold. I love the low clouds when it’s going to rain in winter and the greys and murky whites mix to make a palette out of gloomy light.
When it’s not comfortable anymore in any of the big, important ways it can be tough to find comfort in the small things. Because how much can you sustain yourself on small periods of cool air, every day without a proper period of time out of the sun to replenish your lost fluids and burnt skin, ever? It will affect your health and ultimately you might not ever get over the effects of it. It’s so hot, all the time and sun bears down on you, drowning you in rays of heavy, blazing gold, it burns your skin, drains you of energy and squeezes the moisture out of the skin you live in. You’re worn away by the relentlessness of this unbearable sun and it’s so difficult to remember how to do anything but survive. You’re brutalised by the discomfort, the weight of it, it never eases.
So is comfort a necessity? Or is this, this discomfort a necessity, so you know how to rely on something so much more important; your spirit, born to endure these things, is in need of a trigger to force you on despite the peril.
But if you’ve always been hot and hurting, would you know how to care for another? If you’d never known the sweet joy of cool, fresh, clean drops of rain, the rumble of low clouds and steely reflection of a puddle, would you know how to relieve someone else’s discomfort, or more importantly would you feel inclined to? If you’d only ever felt discomfort, triggered yourself into survival mode, would you even know how to care for someone else’s needs?
So I stand by my original thesis. Comfort is a necessity for our external relationships to thrive but only a luxury if we want our internal one to. I can live with that.
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