Losing the will and ability through comfort

That which heals can also poison.

Recently, I came across this meme involving a cat and mouse where the cat says, “I have neither the will nor ability to chase you”, and the mouse replies, “you have lost your spirit through endless comfort”, and it gave me much more thought than I originally intended – evidently, I’m writing an article about it haha. Comfort can mean a lot of things and be a lot of words. It’s not about being 100% productive and efficient, 7 days a week – we need our rest. Comfort comes in many forms, not just physical, but psychological, emotional, spiritual…but sometimes it’s used as a crutch and derails us from our path and fulfilment in life.

So, where do we start? With the loss of will, the loss of ability, or the comfort?

As I said above, I’m not referring to needed rest as comfort. People not understanding rest properly is why we have so much of society experiencing, or at least prone to, burnout. This “performance persona or image” that we develop is quite literally working us into an early grave. What I am referring to is comfort in the sense of ease, security, relaxation/dulling, relief…this idea of not realising your potential, taking it easy or not trying, numbing yourself from your shortcomings or anxiety or depression, and refusing to answer the call (to adventure, not your phone). Thinking of comfort this way may elicit thoughts around other associated ideas and feelings of exhaustion or submission, possibly even laziness or forgetfulness.

So, why are we seeking comfort? In short, it is a multitude of factors, some I’ve already eluded to. We’re tired and exhausted, we want to numb ourselves from our existence, our shortcomings, our lives that we do AND do not live. We might be feeling a bit of decision fatigue and want to either outsource it to someone else (or increasingly something else i.e. AI). It can be a straight denial or deflection away from accountability or responsibility for the direction of our lives and impact on others.

Seeking comfort is a conscious decision which becomes an unconscious habit. It’s usually a lot of small decisions made daily that form over years as opposed to large scale changes.

Losing the will, what does that mean and look like? Will normally relates to a person’s drive and determination, their animating spirit. Sometimes, it can be difficult to ascertain whether someone has truly lost their will or they have simply arrived at contentment. Comfort blunts motivation, sometimes to the point where people have no desire to do the things they once did previously with regularity (note: depression does this too, but I’m not explicitly talking about that).

Losing the ability is a little bit more easier to define and see, as it can refer to demonstrable skills or the frequency of activities. Much like the saying, “treating the symptom rather than the cause”, while we may notice the losing of ability (symptom), it usually is a result of a loss of will (cause). However, it might be as simple as retraining the ability that has been lost or accepting a compromise.

People only have so much will and ability, but it can be nurtured, encouraged, and improved. Similar with work ethic. Work can be a great source of meaning and responsibility, but it also can be a crutch to fall back on or to seek comfort in, avoiding those two things.

What to do if you are weak-willed or have a lack of desire/motivation? Perhaps you want to be free of desire or to not desire, like in the Eastern philosophy, accepting what comes your way in a more deterministic sense as opposed to using your personal agency and free will. One thing for certain, there is a lot of shame and guilt around not being enough – I’ve written about this before – and while I might be more in the "you are more than you think" camp, there is no doubt people choose comfort to not feel these negative emotions about themselves.

If you’re tired of losing, one option is to choose comfort. If you’re tired of your efforts not generating the results you would like, again, one option is comfort. What might happen though, is that we become comfortable with being miserable or achieve comfort living in misery – and this is not a good thing. I’m not referring to people in pain, those in pain deserve comfort. If we can bring it back to the cat and mouse, the cat has lost his will and ability to chase the mouse, and in doing so has fallen into a state of disrepute. The cat’s comfort has led him to a life of misery, no longer able and lacking the resolve to do what once came so naturally…so easily. Is it harder to not do things? Does not doing things require so much more thinking and effort to justify?

Nonetheless, I keep fighting to be better every day and to not give in to the worse sides of me that are aiming downwards and potentially pulling other people down with me. We can let things happen (over years) and create more suffering as a result. Maintenance is essential, growth is possible, comfort…is a choice. Joy and a fulfilling life is a possibility for you, but it doesn’t happen by itself.

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