Inconvenience

I caught a cold after going out with friends the past few days.

But I’m the kind of person who gets “partially” sick. Not sick enough to lay in bed the whole day, but sick enough that focusing on anything feels impossible. It feels like I have enough energy to do some reading or some light work but really, when I try, I just can't.

Even writing this now is a struggle. It's that weird situation of having enough energy to watch TV or play games but not enough to actually do work. It's the perfect excuse to just relax.

But when I'm sick, what strikes me is how much I want to be comfortable. Having a lozenge in my mouth for 24 hours just to keep the pain away. And once something offers me that comfort, I just want more. Instead of letting the sickness wash over, I keep reaching for ways to fight it. It feels like an addiction, being pain-free feels amazing, so I keep wanting more of that.

It makes me wonder how much of life is just that?

Not about that unbearable pain, but about avoiding the small inconveniences. Especially problems that you can solve with money.

Imagine you start cooking at home, to save money or something. A new air fryer will solve the inconvenience of deep frying things plus it's healthier too. A new wooden chopping board is cleaner and better for the knives too. Oh, hey speaking of which, shouldn't you get a new set of knives too ?

All of this because it feels inconvenient to use what you have now. It's funny because they were never problems until you started cooking.

Why can't we just let these problems be ? Yes, they are nuisances but does solving them lower our tolerance for inconveniences ?

It feels like a justifiable hedonic treadmill because each purchase feels justified, like you're actually solving a problem. But you know, the problems don't go away.

So being sick eventually passes, so painkillers and lozenges make sense. But outside of that, I wonder how much of my energy goes into fixing things that aren’t really broken, just inconvenient.