Convenient/Inconvenient Comfortable/Uncomfortable

For all of my adult life, I have lived in cities in the United States. I am used to convenience. I am used to everything moving in a systematic way. I can buy groceries twenty-four hours a day. I like sleeping in a comfortable bed. I like hot showers.

But what if I don’t have that? What if things become unsystematic? What if the shower is cold? What if I’m sleeping in a room full of strangers and one of them is snoring loudly? What if I step away from all my expectations of my daily routine? Could I survive without wifi?

When I walked the Camino, I stepped away from the convenient and the comfortable, and I found I enjoyed the inconvenient and the uncomfortable more than I thought I would. Inconvenience became fun especially after I realized that it was not about me.

Things just are what they are. I decide whether a long wait is a bad thing. I decide whether the snoring in the middle of the night is sooo terrible (although I did have ear plugs which did the trick). If my feet start to ache, I decide whether it is pain easily curable by resting or some terrible suffering.

Since the Camino, I have found m my own way to comfort. A blanket is comfort when I crash on a friend’s couch as cats crawl over me at night. I will sit and have a cup of tea or coffee to take a break from my day.

I like to be comfortable, but I don’t want to comfort to be a reason to not do something. It’s okay if I have to wait for something. It’s okay if I have to sleep on top of sails on a long boat trip. It’s okay if it’s all not perfect. It’s just life.

Recently, I was sailing (which I do a lot). The wind picked up and sea state got choppy. Suddenly, the boat hit a wave wrong, and everyone on the boat was soaked. It was a chilly day, and the water wasn’t very warm. Still, I couldn’t help laughing. Oh well, now I was wet. On a sailboat. What part of that was really truly awful?