I was recently talking to a friend at work, and things got pretty heavy for an office conversation. Let’s call him Rod. Both of us are LA transplants, and our conversation drifted into how different our current digs are from the places we grew up. For anyone who has never made a home in Los Angeles, it is the least cohesive place that I have ever been. LA is a patchwork maze of 20 million people divided into tiny communities that don’t particularly seem to like or acknowledge each other. Everyone here lives with a sense of discomfort, from the traffic to the crowding to just the general insanity of the place.
While we were talking, Rod finally told me the reason that his family recently moved. His daughter was the only black child in her elementary school class. One day, another kid in class raised his hand and said that since she is the only black kid, everyone should go on the other side of the class from her. The most frustrating part for Rod was that the school thought it necessary to talk to him and his daughter about what happened in class, instead of the offending kid and his parents. His daughter didn’t do anything wrong, but had to sit down with the principal to talk about what happened.
This brought back the feelings of having to deal with racist bullshit when he was growing up in New Orleans. He recalled being in the same situation as his daughter, and the embarrassment of the time that he and his brother were ruthlessly harassed by cops in front of his own neighbors. Even though he grew up in a good home in a nice neighborhood, he was still never comfortable as part of the only black family around.
Fast forward to today. Rod and his family loved living near the water in Marina Del Rey, but after this incident decided it was best to move to Inglewood. At least in Inglewood, there are other black families and hopefully his daughter would never have to keep dealing with the same nonsense. Now, the purpose of this story isn’t to make some ham-handed argument about the inherent racism of white children. In fact, anyone who has ever had a five-year-old knows that they have no self-control or filter. They say hurtful things without meaning or understanding, and they have to be taught the boundaries of how to interact with other people. Instead, I want to focus on how we have come to such different conclusions about what came up next in our conversation.
Very frustrated, Rod asked me when he would find a place where he could just be comfortable. In that moment, I thought back on my own life. After about a minute, I responded that I don’t think that place exists, and pursuing comfort is probably a fool’s errand. The more I’ve thought about it, the truer I’ve always known this thought to be.
I completely understand Rod’s feelings of discomfort in his surroundings. Most of my life has been spent in a place that I never felt that I belonged. After I took my first bite from the fruit of knowledge, I spent the next decade wanting nothing more than to escape the discomfort. My hometown is split demographically between the older, working-class areas and nouveau rich suburbs. Being in the gifted classes, I spent every day surrounded by classmates that had way more money that my family. This doesn’t sound like much of a problem, but at 15 being the kid in the same clothes twice a week draws quite a bit of unwanted attention. Coupled with the fact that I was almost 300 pounds by age 17 - I was trapped in a prison created in my own mind.
I did have one thing going for me though. I was really smart, and I would escape one day soon to college. I chose a service academy because it was the farthest thing imaginable for the place I was, and the navy guaranteed I could never return to my home 1000 miles from the ocean. I never once felt homesick in college, but it didn’t take long to know I didn’t fit in to this place either. I’m not sure what I expected, but if you feel uncomfortable around middle-class suburbanites, the answer probably isn’t to choose a patrician training ground instead. I found solace in some of the friends I did make there, but I also learned that no matter where I went for the rest of my life, I probably was going to be a bit of a stranger.
Once I got out into the real world, I still always felt like an outsider. Even though I have the elite education credentials, I still have working-class values. I have always been surrounded by college grads because of my job, and I have very seldom connected with many people from my current social class. In fact, I’m often uncomfortable even spending time around this group of people because of our differing world views. But this all brings us back to the point of the story, can we just be comfortable?
I think it is most helpful here to not imagine the world as I wish could exist, but instead look at how my life has played out in reality. Since I have never been comfortable, but have been able to create the life I want, is comfort really what I need? The answer is clearly no. I want a life of meaning and not a life of comfort. The most meaningful things I have ever done have come as a result of intentionally making myself uncomfortable.
My two best examples of this were my last two job choices. When my tour as a flight instructor ended, I took a job in Italy. When we arrived, my wife was seven months pregnant, and we couldn’t speak a lick of the language. That first year was difficult to say the least. Every day as a new immigrants and new parents seemed harder than the last. However, we slowly adjusted to our local customs, learned the language, and grew closer together as a family. By the end of our four years, we had a vibrant social schedule and adopted Puglia as a our second home. We still miss this place everyday we are back in America.
This return also marked the end of my navy career, and I was left with another decision. I was trained by the navy as a systems engineer, I got to be a pretty good one over time. When it came time to select a new job, I had two great offers: one as an engineer in San Diego (which had been my home for 8 years) and one as a salesman in LA (a place where I had been for about four days). Again, I eschewed the comfortable choice and we decided to move to LA and learn a new career. In the four years since, I have become pretty damn good at selling, and it has turned out to be a perfect fit for my unique skill set. By the time I had to answer Rod’s question, I knew for sure that the uncomfortable parts of life made the most meaningful ones.
I understand his frustration though when it comes to protecting his child. As I made clear in part one, protecting children from the world is the most important responsibility we have. However, there comes a time in everyone’s life where they must move beyond the comforts of home and face the difficult parts of life. In essence, comfort and happiness are enjoyments found along the journey, not the end goal itself. As parents, we do have to learn to let go as our children approach adulthood and we do them no favors by extending the protection of childhood indefinitely. The comfort and happiness of childhood are fleeting, and we must grow past the desire to always keep them. However, our modern culture is poisoned by the idea that comfort should be the bed rock that our lives are built upon.
As I made clear in part one, I think that children should be protected above all others, regardless of any qualification. I believe that it is a father’s role to create as much of a paradise of comfort and protection as possible for his children. As our children age, I believe that we should slowly introduce them to the outside world and make sure that they are ready to face that world once they are adults. This means making clear that not everything in life will be comfortable and exposing them to discomfort from time to time to help them grow and learn. Once our children have grown, we have done the best we can for them and do them no favors by trying to further protect them or demand comfort on their behalf. That doesn’t mean we abandon them as parents, but simply must allow them to make their own way in the world without our constant care.
The best things in life come from facing our discomforts and making them comfortable. This is a never-ending process, and comfort reflects a lack of challenge that eventually leads to atrophy and back to discomfort. This doesn’t mean that we are made to be miserable and should wallow in that misery. We should simply put comfort in its proper place, as something to be enjoyed when available but certainly never as an end in itself. We must learn to take some pleasure in the comforts available to us but to always understand when it’s time to move on to our next confrontation with discomfort.
I’m a different generation and my parents were superb at protecting me…probably too much so. You are right in discomfort makes you move forward. My sons had some similar situations as yourself and they have gone on to make remarkable lives for themselves and families such as you did.
I’ve been facing a major discomfort in my life the last couple years and your post made me realize the gifts that have also been brought to my door during this time for which I’m most grateful. Keep writing!