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CHAPTER
20
“R” Is for Risking Discomfort
Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
—Mark Twain“R” is for risking discomfort. Innovators take chances. They push
the envelope. They learn to accept the discomfort of creative ten-
sion. They’re sort of like the fellow whose doctor told him: “Yo u’ve
been under a lot of stress, you need to relax.” To which the man
replied, “I tried relaxing, but—I don’t know—I feel more comfort-
able tense.”
This paradox of being more comfortable while tense is where
the creator lives. Unfortunately, many of the messages of our cul-
ture emphasize comfort as the goal of life. A variation on the bumper
sticker, “The one with the most toys wins” might be “The one with
the comfiest La-Z-Boy wins.” C.S. Lewis made a good comment
on that:Comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you
look for truth, you may find comfort in the end. If you look for
comfort, you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap
and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair [Mere
Christianity, Macmillan 1952].14-25 ware 175 1/19/01, 1:15 PM