The Comfortable Life is Killing You

To truly live—rather than merely exist—one must reject the illusion of safety and embrace the uncertainty that defines life. Growth, passion, and fulfillment lie beyond the walls of comfort, in the unpredictable terrain of risk and self-discovery.

“Depression is the inability to construct a future.”

Anxiety, as Rollo May also pointed out, “is not being able to know the world you’re in, not being able to orient yourself in your own existence.”

Freud defined depression as anger turned inwards. There’s some truth to this for sure, but I think the great existential psychologist Rollo May defined it more accurately: “Depression is the inability to construct a future.”

In the words of Joseph Campbell, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

Nietzsche saw this truth with fierce clarity: only those who live dangerously, who throw themselves into the abyss of effort and uncertainty, truly live at all.

Verily the lust for comfort murders

the passion of the soul, and then

walks grinning in the funeral.

His logotherapy framework posits that humans thrive when they have a “why” to live for, often forged in hardship. A life too comfortable risks stripping us of that “why,” leaving us adrift like so many of us today.

It’s a rallying cry for embracing the suck and the struggle. Purpose emerges from striving against resistance, not from settling into ease. Get uncomfortable, uncivilize a bit, push your body, and do hard things, mentally and physically.

A 2015 study by the American Psychological Association found that individuals who routinely undertake demanding activities, such as mastering a skill or solving complex problems, experience greater life satisfaction than those who linger in ease.