We need to step out of our bubble more

Nine-day cycle ride reawakens gratitude for privileges of my life

‘Tis but a scratch!” says the knight in Monty Python

and the Holy Grail. In the same vein, “I went for a bike ride last week”, says I. Last week, alongside the charity Tour De Cure, I cycled about 1400km from Sydney to Geelong.

Up and down went our legs for nine days straight, and raised more than $3 million for cancer research,

prevention and support projects in the process. We rode through some of the most beautiful parts of Australia, and some of the most inhospitable. It was every bit as challenging as it sounds — wet and cold, tiring and sore.

I suppose the reason I wanted to be involved is obvious — the cause is very dear to me. But now, back in the comfort of my home, I have discovered another reason to do things like this more often.

This is indisputable: Our lives are crafted to be as comfortable as possible. We are encapsulated and

insulated in this soft, warm protective barrier, like teeth being moulded into a mouthguard plucked fresh from boiling water.

Cars have heated seats and sometimes even cooled ones. Beds are king-sized, plush and draped with soft sheets. We turn the shower on, and we wait until the clean water flowing away down the drain is warm before we step in.

Mankind has strived to reach this point since its beginning; to plane away and sand back the rough edges of existence on Earth; to conquer enough of the big issues, like sufficient food and water, that we can decimate the small ones. Like how I can’t be fussed to walk around the supermarket to collect my ample food and drink, so I would like it delivered to my door please.

We have succeeded. Our existence and interaction with the world around us, our place in the circle of life, is now inside a big smooth blob of perfumed, sterile, protective gel.

The reason for this is simple: Comfort sells, convenience sells. An improvement to a product, or an entirely new product, which makes life easier, sells. It has created a race to the bottom, a pursuit of trivial nonissues, enhancements of 1 per cent.

But why do we ask to live these lives? Once the big issues are solved, the small ones are of such little consequence. Why do we pay for comfort which never ceases, the solving of “problems” which we have happily co-existed with until a solution becomes available?

The answer is that it will never be enough. We will always need more. We become comfortable with the bliss within which we live, and then we need it to become somehow better still. The happiness and joy of what we have wears off and we become less happy as a result.

Were you to give someone from 100 years ago an insight into your daily life, they would say . . . well, I can’t be sure what they would say.

Remind yourself how much you have, by going back to less occasionally.

I expect they might sympathise with you: “You must have been terribly afflicted by polio, so as to need your car boot to close itself with the press of a button rather than the swift lowering of your arm”. But they would very much like your internal plumbing and the cold walk outside to the long drop it saves you each night.

Of course, we do not think this way, our lives are normality to us. Now this may be a non-issue itself. If you want to always live as resourceful a life as possible, I wish you the best — there is a scene in the movie Wall-E you may benefit from viewing.

But what is certain is that, and bear with the pseudo-new age phrasing here, as humans we never grow or develop inside our comfort zone.

You absolutely will never improve yourself without feeling some discomfort along the way, be that in learning a new skill, exercising, studying, asking someone out, or breaking up with someone.

To live without stepping outside that blob is to live on autopilot, and honestly, without full gratitude or understanding for the safety and comfort it provides. It is stagnation.

The constant desire for more is an infection, multiplying within the mind, and is certainly unsustainable and a path to inevitable unhappiness.

The solution is simply to step outside that bubble, as frequently as possible. How you do that is up to you.

I suspect I have just discovered what people are referring to when they talk about “getting back into nature”. Camping has never appealed to me because of how primitive and coarse it is. Now it appeals for the same reason.

And the solution to always needing more? Remind yourself how much you have, by going back to less occasionally. My shower has never been more of a sensory overload. My bed never as luxurious. My sleep-ins and slow mornings have never stretched out as infinitely as they do today, after spending nine days nowhere near the bare necessities, but closer than usual. When you’re grateful to be not riding a bike for eight hours a day, you have a lot of gratitude for everything you do within those eight hours instead.

This isn’t a condescending lecture. My life is as “convenient” as anyone else’s, and I am the world’s biggest fan of ordering groceries online.

Rather, it is an epiphany I had the other day, while trying to figure out how to bottle this feeling of immense gratitude. And I’m hoping this is the answer.