Comfort
What does comfort mean to you?
I’d like to compare some of the differences in comfort and discomfort levels that are part of our lives at the moment.
The aim of the post is not guilt. More a, hell, if those people are going out every day to keep the rest of us safe, I can dip my toe into a topic that’s foreign to me!
Comfort zone
Is the area in which we prefer to spend most of our time. Unless we are happy being indoors for twenty-three hours a day, many of us are living a long way outside of what was our preferred zone.
The latest ILLUMINATION writing incentive is a test of your mettle and, I hope, a more cheerful note.
Dr Mehmet Yildiz gave us the challenge to venture out of our warm and fuzzy places by using novelty and boldly going where we’ve never been before.
Use of novelty is an effective method to move out of the comfort zone as it can activate the life energy for creativity. By using novelty, we can start opening new neural pathways in our brain.
Cold comfort
Some of us have volunteered to escape our natural working from home comfort and venture out, on sparsely occupied buses, to full call centres, life-saving and threatening hospitals, and controlled shopping experiences.
Gone are the days of ambling around your local supermarket. We’re more like furtive foragers, wary of the invisible danger and hoping social distancing will make us immune.
In previous centuries, our fears might have been in the form of wild animals, murderers and thieves, and the plague.
Today, some bus drivers are volunteering to take us to work while their colleagues shelter at home. A passenger insists on paying in cash despite the bus driver’s caution that contactless card payment would be in both their best interests. The passenger shouts “I don’t care!” The bus driver has no choice other than to take the man’s money.
Supermarket workers are demonstrating the true British stiff upper lip while smiling and chatting to their customers.
Soldiers in the US are volunteering to be exposed to the virus.
Are these acts of desperation, bravery or recklessness?
As a civilization, we are continuously evolving. Not necessarily for the best.
Comfort eating
What are your go-to comfort foods?
Mine are Marks & Spencer’s truffle oil crisps, shepherd’s pie, and rhubarb crumble with custard. Oh and buttered toast and Marmite. Not all at the same mealtime.
Comforter
Someone who or something which provides support, eases discomfort or keeps you warm. It’s a duvet or a blanket in British English.
Whether you are pinned indoors or risking your life as a key worker, finding comfort is essential.
Take comfort
In being at home with or without family or work, keeping in touch with friends via apps and comfort-shopping online, stay safe.
In writing exciting new niche stories, testing your boundaries, spreading your writer’s wings. If not now, when? What have you got to lose?
In the knowledge that farmers, supermarket workers and delivery services are providing essential produce and products to keep the country fed while some of us are snuggled in our comforters or chinchilla-soft manmade blankets or throws.
From the communications and utility staff who ensure our services operate 24/7.
In those nurses and doctors who are dying to keep strangers alive. They are beyond all realms of comfort imaginable. Keep applauding them and praying that they will receive protective gear to keep them safe.
Knowing the bus drivers and call centre workers who are risking their health on a daily basis for the minimum wage to transport key workers to offices where they assess the health of scared and vulnerable people over the phone.
We are possibly carrying the virus to and from work and home with us. Some of us will go sick, some will become immune, others will fight for their lives and a percentage will die.
Comfortably numb
As a lighter-hearted end to this post here’s a poem by Sherry McGuinn.
Comfort has been brought to you by an ILLUMINATION writer and editor who will be travelling on a bus, using her contactless weekly-pass, to go to work in a call centre. She’d rather be at home writing.
Stay safe, folks!
