Bookshot #188: The Comfort Crisis

The Missus read this book a while back and really liked it, so after hearing her talk about it for months

, I finally got around to picking it up and seeing for myself what the fuss was about. In essence, Michael Easter is arguing something pretty unusual that grabs your attention right away: we're too damn comfortable.

"Embrace discomfort to reclaim your wild, happy, healthy self." That's the tagline on the front of the book, and quite honestly, going into it, I was a little bit dubious. I don't know why: I got really into the whole mushroom thing that went around a few years back, and I will happily take Lion's Mane until the end of my days because I found all the mushroom science I read to be somewhat convincing. (I am, I will admit, also the type of person to say, "hey, that supplement sounds interesting, maybe I'll try that," so there's a little bit of that there I've got to be honest about as well.)

I've heard all the Joe Rogan things. I've seen the Goop Documentaries and the ayahuasca journeys that people go on and I've read Michael Pollan's excellent book on psychedelics, and it's all very interesting and intriguing, but not exactly uncomfortable. But I drew a hard line at the whole cold plunge thing; I just couldn't do it. I tried to inch my shower into cold for a few seconds the way they recommend to build up a tolerance and you know what? Just not my thing. Not for me, thanks--

So you can see why, when confronted with a book whose whole basic thesis is that we're too damn comfortable, I might be a little leery. I'm willing to try new things, but only until a point.

Easter, however, goes literally beyond his comfort zone to prove that it's discomfort that can be more beneficial than we think. To put this to the test, Easter decides to go hunting in the Alaskan wilderness (along with a couple of experienced fellas who know what they're doing) and spends something like a month out in the bush-- he feels the silence of nature for the first time. (Something we don't normally get to experience in modern society, as we're always on and there's always noise somewhere.) He gets to experience hunting for the first time-- he takes down a Caribou, butchers it and then hauls the meet back out to their drop off point. (He talks extensively about the rise of ruck packs and how beneficial just carrying heavy loads is for the body.) 

Along the way, he does his research. He learns about the idea of misogi-- which Wikipedia says is 'a Shinto practice of ritual purification, but his definition is simpler: a super hard task you set yourself. (Rule 1. Make it really hard, Rule 2. Don't due). He talks about the benefits of fasting and hunger, because after all, our ancestors, back when we were hunting and gathering, we would take hours, sometimes even the whole day, to run down our food. (We didn't have strength or speed, but we did have endurance back then.

He also travels to Bhutan to learn about how that culture views happiness and how they think about death-- because they do, a lot. Not in a morbid way, but in a 'death is part of life, so we should talk about it' kind of way. It's refreshing to see a culture that while perhaps not free of the western hang ups about death and dying, at least looks at them a different way-- a way that helps them appreciate their own lives a little more.

There are things that you think about from time to time. I've never been hunting, but this book makes me wonder if I should. (It also makes me want to try Caribou, but that's because it sounds delicious the way Easter describes it.) I feel like since reading this book I've been trying to spend more time outside and more time away from my phone-- I don't know how successful I have been at the latter part of that, but I'm trying to be more intentional about it and I think that's a good start, anyway. (Certainly making an effort to stay away from social media-- albeit in a somewhat half-assed way these days has been nothing but good for my mental health.) 

Life has been mildly insane for various reasons for the past month or so. Hopefully I get a chance to sit and think about this book a little more than I have so far-- if there's one thing that might actually come out of this book it's that the Missus and I might acquire a ruck pack and try that out for size. It's been on my list of goals for the year for a few years now, but maybe it really is time to stop eating shit food and start doing more with my body and really taking care of my health. (After all, it's all downhill from here and if, as they book says you're supposed to think about your death every day, I think I'd like my death to be a long time from now at the very least.)

Overall: Interesting and certainly gives you a lot to think about in terms of how much of it can be applied to your everyday life, but it also suffers from something a lot of these types of books do. It's ultimately not that relatable: as cool as Caribou hunting in the wilds of Alaska sounds, how many people are actually going to do that? Maybe more should. My Grade: *** out of ****