Comfort

Some time last week, before he went back to Wife's, Son 2 and I had a conversation about "comfort".  Specifically, he expressed some puzzlement that it is so terribly important to Wife to be comfortable.  She spends a large part of many days trying to get warm or to get cool, trying to palliate a headache or soothe a sore throat, ... trying to do anything to make herself more comfortable.  Son 2 says that he has asked her why, because he figures on his side that comfort is no big deal.  Sure, it's nice and all ... but it's way down there on his list of priorities.  I don't know how directly he challenges her on this point, but my own recollection is that trying to explain any other point of view to her is like speaking Chinese: it is so impossible for her to understand it that either she doesn't hear the question at all or she assumes you mean something else.

But yesterday while I was lolling around poking through books and wasting time, I ran across the following quote:  "Physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten onto whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much."  (Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, p. 27)

So is that the point?  That Wife's quest for comfort is really just a symptom of her chronic unhappiness?  It seems very likely ....