Comfort is a strange and bizarrely entitled expectation. How did we arrive at this place where we feel angry, entitled, unreasonable and demanding when we must experience just moments of discomfort? I think about this a lot, but there are moments when it takes over entirely.

I was stepping off a train in Stockholm not so long ago when I saw an older woman descending the one or two very narrow and steep steps to disembark the train, and she slipped and fell, hard, her leg sliding between the train step and the platform. She screamed out, and her leg bent the wrong way completely. People gathered around to help. After wincing and thinking about what I could possibly do, I decided to just walk away, but the violence and suddenness of the moment stuck with me for days. What this has to do with comfort isn’t exactly clear. But such moments jar me from my walking cocoon and being in my own world to question all these things, like what right we think we have to being comfortable all the time.