Comfort, Growth, and Order

With a dash of chaos

I have a conflicted mindstate today. It’s not because of present reality, it’s a result of preparing to leave everything I know and go on adventure once more.

The comfort sphere of my brain says ‘but everything here is so easy and comfortable, look how smoothly you can float through life’, but the growth sphere of my brain says ‘I am slowly but surely dying, and if you don’t subject me to a phenomenal shock I am going to render myself useless’.

The growth sphere wins, every single time. But fuck, it’s a battle.

I’m walking the razor's edge, trying to broker a deal between these two warring factions and the peace treaty looks something like this.

Me to the comfort sphere: ‘Look, we’ll still have the morning routines, and we know what we’re doing for work for the next six months at least. There’s plenty of room to float smoothly through the future, don’t worry’.

Me to the growth sphere: ‘You’re right. How about we agree to fix plans for our physical whereabouts in 3-month intervals, but keep our personal habits relatively consistent?’

They’re both still grumbling, however I’m convinced it will bring peace to both camps. But while I’m negotiating between these two rowdy fuckers, my presence and attention to the moments that I’m in is compromised. 

Instead of smelling the coffee and feeling it hit the olfactory senses, I’m considering whether to cancel my insurance before or after I do my tax, and then the coffee is already coating my tongue, and I totally missed the smell.

I realise there is a third sphere of the brain. The sphere that worries about creating order and making sure that everything is perfect before moving onto the next adventure. 

I really love this part of my brain, because I see the absence of this function in others as exactly what drives people to throw their cigarette butts on the street. But between the comfort/growth battle and the ‘tidy up after yourself’ sphere, there’s almost no time left for little old me .

There is plenty of me in each of the camps, but when I’m in the comfort sphere (which is typically responsible for things like work, sustenance, and hygiene) the growth sphere starts whispering.

When I’m in the growth sphere (responsible for learning, seeking out challenges, testing my capabilities, generally residing in the unknown) the order sphere starts to perk up.

And when I’m in the order sphere (dealing with material goods, relationship management, and future planning) my comfort sphere lifts his head.

Fortunately, when I align with the Big Me behind it all I can see that they’re all just steps along the path. Writing this has helped me see how each sphere of existence is in place to support the others.

I need the comfort sphere to chill out and recover from previous challenges, but also to prepare for future challenges; the growth sphere keeps me feeling alive and youthful (35 and young, fight me), and away from becoming a bored drone; and the order sphere makes sure that the edges between these three spheres are reasonably clear so that I don’t get pulled from one to the other

The thief of Now is always the distractions that pull me from comfort to growth to order. When I am in comfort and I am all the way in it, I love it, and the same can be said for growth and order. The scattered mind that allows me to drift is the root of the dissatisfaction.

And instinctually I have been making a radical return to my meditation practice. After having butthole surgery, the seated practice (perhaps unsurprisingly) became challenging and I found myself doing other things to keep myself fit, fresh, and sharp, but as I’ve talked about a thousand times before, meditation is The One. Everything else just prepares me for that.

I am reminded of a Buddhist quote that goes something along the lines of ‘when you don’t have enough time in your life to meditate for an hour a day, you should meditate for two hours a day’. And it is spot fucking on. 

Because the second life gets hectic, and the battle between comfort/growth/order gets intense, it’s so easy to lose an insane amount of time to distraction. And every second lost to distraction is a second taken away from one of those three spheres that are constantly calling for my attention.

So, as much as I’d like to spend my time running from A to B to C and ‘getting everything done’, I am instead taking my time. I am preparing my day on a comfortable foundation, and then whipping up a program from an ordered state of mind, and then I am seeking out the challenges that help me feel alive. 

There’s still room for improvement, but precisely that is what gives life its richness. I can’t just do one of the things, I have to do all of them, but I shouldn’t be trying to do all of these things at the same time. Multitasking is fine for housework, but it’s not OK for things that matter.

Things that matter deserve my complete attention. When I give them my full attention, not only do they ACTUALLY GET DONE, but typically I am satisfied with them and they yield appropriate fruit. But as this piece has shown me (and as the universe shows me time and again), even if I don’t have a plan, and I create from an arguably scattered place, but I do it with complete attention, the Golden Thread becomes apparent, and I realise that there was a plan from the beginning – it just wasn’t MY plan.

And this is where chaos resides. Between comfort, growth, and order, there are moments that don’t fit nicely in a bucket. Those moments throw split-second decisions at you that can change the trajectory of your life forever, but once the decision is met and the moment passes, you’re back into the comfort/growth/order matrix to try and integrate the chaos.

A good friend recently reached out to say he’s wanting to radically alter the course of his life, but he doesn't know how to do it. We’ve known each other for years and he finds the way I live admirable and terrifying (funnily enough, not the first time I’ve heard this), and wondered whether I had any tips.

And of course I did.

My advice was, and most often is, that if you want to change the course of your life, don’t add anything new at all. Go in reverse. Make a list of everything you actually need to live, and compare it to all of the things you presently have. Then go through the process of removing all the stuff you don’t need.

You’re creating space for chaos. That chaos will threaten to crush you, or drive you crazy, but it will also give you these moments that have the capacity to change your life for the better, forever. 

Because if you are already feeling like you need to radically alter your life, you’re crazy, it just isn’t manifesting with psychological intensity yet. It’s whispering in the back of your mind, and you should take notice, just like my friend did.

He will have to review his comfort, growth, and order spheres, and declutter them in a manner that would make Marie Kondo proud, then a snap decision will appear and his entire life will change. 

But he will only be able to make this decision when he is paying attention, and that necessarily means that he can’t be distracted by bullshit, hence the decluttering.

Because he can’t see the Golden Thread, the plan that is beyond him, just like I couldn’t see the Golden Thread when I sat down to write this. Like Michelangelo, chiselling away all that was not David, it’s necessary to get rid of all that is not relevant, and then what is relevant appears obviously before you.

And now, after putting this practice of growth into work with full presence and awareness, I have lost an hour of time but have gained some impressive internal insights. The distractions have been stripped away, and I see the value of the work that I have been engaged in.

And the next steps appear obvious. It’s time for me to move from growth to order, because Germany has a governmental office specifically for this (Ordnungsamt – Order Department) and I have to ensure I get my German affairs schick.

Because the end is as important as the beginning.

I hope you all have a lovely week. 

Much love,

Nick