Like most people, I tend to avoid discomfort. I tend to wrap the whole concept in a package of negativity. But maybe discomfort’s not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s a good thing. Especially if it drives us to action, or at least to an uneasy contemplation.
Here’s the thing. I’m a people-pleaser.
On the surface, it means I don’t want to make anybody uncomfortable or unhappy. I often blame my hesitancy to share my faith on this people-pleasing tendency of mine. Heaven forbid anybody feels weird, or uncomfortable, around me.
The truth?
People-pleasing’s really not about how other people feel. It’s about me. I’m the one who doesn’t want to feel uncomfortable. I’m the one who doesn’t want to feel unhappy.
This attribute leaks into my writing. I’m inclined to wrap each chapter in a nice pretty bow, release all the tension so the reader (scratch that….the writer) can stop feeling uncomfortable.
All of us hate to feel uncomfortable.
That’s the key. The ticket. The truth to embrace. In life and in fiction. I need to relish the discomfort. Bask in it. Let it soak and settle until people squirm and scramble to recapture a sense of peace.
In life, that peace won’t come until you’re in the arms of Jesus. In fiction, it won’t (or shouldn’t) come until you reach the end of the book. Comfort at the cost of hell, comfort at the cost of putting the novel back on the nightstand, isn’t comfort at all. I need to stop making people comfortable.
Just think how different we’d all write, how we’d all live, if we embraced discomfort.
Questions to Ponder: How differently would you live if you embraced discomfort?
