Way back when, at a time when I spent hours each day soaked up by the warm embrace of a sofa-sized beanbag, I was thoroughly aware of a meet-in-the-middle between pleasure and guilt.
After a while those beanbags were less comfortable. They were still the same, of course, but I felt differently about them. I took them for granted.
The same went for my bed. Kitchen. Running water. All of it.
A few years later, once embarking on long, cheap adventures had become a habit, it struck me that for all the lessons that a good adventure offers up one of the finest was that taking things for granted is much less likely when you live a life on the move.
That old adage, comfort kills ambition, had never been so true.
Camping out in tents and hammocks and even wild camping in weird places like old barns, and olive groves and hidden inside concrete construction tubes can be fun, but they’re not comfortable. Not really.
These days I adventure a little less but I never climb into a comfortable bed or turn on the tap without feeling grateful. They’re a real privilege and I know how lucky I am because they weren’t always there.
So maybe it’s worth backing away from our comforts every now and then, if only for a night, just as a reminder of how valuable that sofa is.
Time away earns the reward.
