Fluffed to Death
A short manifesto against soft pants and soulless coffee.
How comfortable is your life? Is it fluffy enough? You probably woke up today on a mattress loaded with springs, soft pads, unicorn hair, and mother's kisses. AI controlled blinds let the sunlight softly touch your skin. Wale sounds from the speaker have faded away. Then you pressed a button on a coffee maker. Oh wait, you could even programme your coffee machine to start automatically! Saved you an entire button press! Now you are planning how to invest your newly obtained wealth of 2 seconds of your life.
Then you slip into stretchy pants and glide into an office where the temperature’s tuned to divine precision.
That's the life, isn't it? Factory-assembled happiness in 10,000 easy payments. But does it make you happy?
What if I tell you that it actually steals joy from your life? Hard to believe? Stay tuned, like and subscribe — if you somehow find a way, which would surprise me a lot.
Think about some big things you bought for yourself a while ago, like last year. Maybe a big mattress with the memory effect (without a speech effect though, so it will never tell you where you’ve put the keys – but it remembers). A new car? This new coffee table. You have it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous people of wherever country (my respect, if you took the reference).
It certainly brought you much joy to buy this stuff, anticipating how it would turn your life for the best forever and ever. And first days you used this new razor with 57 blades — our skin had never felt smoother— and it was so refreshing!
Do you feel the same now?
I’d bet, just based on neurobiology 101, that you came back to the dreaded base level. Hedonic adaptation is a bitch, your sensitivity to all this goodness drops, and you feel the same as before. Now it’s time to buy something else, isn’t it?
Only now you have one more “thing”, which you need to maintain, repair, replace periodically. What’s even worse: now you can’t live without this coffee freshly brewed for you when you woke up.
And the shitty coffee from a simple machine you had before — now tastes like cow piss. At least you convince yourself that’s how it would taste — if you feed coffee beans to a cow, and then manage to catch this ultrasonic soon-to-be burger to get a sample.
I diverged. Now you can tell the difference between ten coffee blends. You are so refined and full of culture, feeling like a sommelier tasting old wines.
But think about it. You’ve been happily drinking this cow piss coffee for years, you enjoyed it — as much as you enjoy the new one.
Surprise, you have trapped yourself into buying expensive beans, owning, repairing and occasionally replacing the expensive machine. You need a bit more space on the table. When you move home — it’s another thing to pack. It’s all just suffocating.
And for what?
I had this revelation recently. I like travelling, camping too. Inflatable mattress is the largest and heaviest part of my kit. If it gets punctured and I can’t fix it — I am gonna wake up unreasonably grumpy like a barbarian, more inclined to village pillaging than enjoying nature.
What if I taught myself to sleep on any rough surfaces, in any positions. And you know what happened when I tried? Not much. I slept all night, slightly sore neck and shoulders. Few more times, and I’ll sleep as well as in the bed.
I did the same with cold in winter, leaving a window open, with nothing but an empty duvet cover over me. It took a couple of weeks of gradual exposure, and here I am, sleeping at 15°C — I didn’t think that was even possible, but my body adapted quickly.
Feeling like yeti, I am much more ready for winter camping now. Can also save a few pounds on house heating.
What am I trying to say? Comfort is a trap! It only makes you happy in a short term, adds crap to your life you need to clean, fix — strips you of your freedom. It adds anxiety over travel: “Will there be comfy beds and pillows there?” Guess what: you can sleep on the floor, having a rolled towel under your head, and you’ll be just fine.
Just imagine it: a life free of “things”. All the saved money means you can invest it into something meaningful, finally build this nuclear shelter you always wanted, or a tree house at least. Or you can work less. Take a pay cut, quit the job you hate, and live the high life pulling weeds and chasing chickens — finally free.
Real life begins when your neck hurts and your coffee sucks.
If you ever feel like reaching out — whether you have something to share, or just want to talk — I’d be happy to hear from you, stranger. This isn’t about followers. It’s about finding kindness and similar minded people in a loud world.