If comfort doesn't bring happiness, any sacrifice we make for comfort is a waste

Or: biking to work in the rain for a month straight

This past month, almost every weekday for four straight weeks, my wife has said the following two words to me as I walked out the front door in the morning:

“Sorry babe!”

At the tail end of this year’s hot, wet Australian summer season, we’ve been receiving almost unprecedented levels of rain here on the Sunshine Coast. (Yes, we see the irony. It’s hilarious.)

Back when I was working fully remote, this wouldn’t have been an issue. And if we were a two-car family, it also wouldn’t be an issue.

But because I now work at the university 3-4 days a week, and because we’re not a two-car family, it is an issue.

I’ve been doing a lot — and I mean a lot — of a biking in the rain.

Fifteen minutes, twice a day, to and from the university campus. I’ve spent a lot of time on my bike, getting absolutely drenched, sliding through puddles that splash up and soak my shoes and my butt. That’s a lot of time for me to ponder the question:

Does this suck?

Once I arrive at the university, I need to shower in one of the available staff shower facilities. This isn’t only when it rains — in the Australian summer and most of winter, I’m almost always sweaty enough from the ride that a shower is a requirement.

This means that before leaving for the day, I need to pack all of my clothes and toiletries. One day I forgot to pack a change of underwear, so I spent the day commando (I didn’t mention this to students). Another day I forgot to pack a belt, and had to use the braided charging cord from my MacBook to hold my pants up.

(This I did tell my students. They thought it was hilarious.)

This scenario is the reason my wife felt the need to apologize to me just about every morning for a month. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and it wasn’t like she was the cause of my soaking wet commutes. We’ve decided to remain a one-car family for as long as we can, and considering she spends the day with our 1-year-old (and 6-year-old when he’s out of school), running errands and generally managing our entire family’s needs, she naturally needs and deserves car privileges.

Me? I just need to get to my work spot in the morning and back again in the afternoon. And I’m not carting along 1-2 kids.

So that “Sorry!” isn’t a “Sorry I did something wrong!” It’s: “Sorry for the rain, sorry for the fact that you have to go out into it, sorry for the circumstances that have aligned to make you have to get soaking wet twice a day and shower at a public shower at your workplace.”

“Sorry for your discomfort.”

And honestly? I was starting to feel pretty sorry for myself, too.

There were a couple of very real conversations, after I’d entered the house in my underwear because I stripped off my dripping-wet clothes in the garage, when we discussed whether this was a sign it was time for a second family vehicle.

And I considered it.

But then I remembered something else:

Beyond having our essential human needs met, there is absolutely no correlation between increased comfort and increased happiness.

Don’t believe me? Just ask — oh, I don’t know, all of modern society.

Our lives are inarguably as physically comfortable as they’ve been at any point in human history. We can get what we need faster, more cheaply, and more dependably than ever, by a huge margin. Hunger and starvation are nearly eliminated. We have access to the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets. We have to commute to work less and less often. Lights turn on automatically when we enter rooms, and if we don’t we can just ask Alexa to turn them on for us.

As a species, we’re generally warm enough, fed enough, and at relatively small risk of dying early. (Of course there are significant exceptions to all of these generalizations. I’m speaking purely in comparative terms relative to the rest of human history.)

And yet, our own assessment of our general happiness is not great — and trending worse. We tend to be anxious, depressed, and generally lacking in hope and optimism.

As our lives have become more convenient and comfortable, the best that could be said is that it’s had no effect on our happiness. The worst that could be said is that there’s an inverse relationship — the more comfortable we get, the less happy we become.

So, back to riding my bike in the rain.

What would be the cost of the increase in comfort which would come from buying a second car?

Well, there’s the financial cost. A second vehicle is expensive, both in its upfront purchase price and its ongoing maintenance and fuel costs. Meanwhile I would need to buy an annual parking pass to park at the university.

Then there’s the opportunity cost of what I miss out on by not riding my bike. This includes 30 minutes of cardio exercise per weekday and the mental health benefits of biking through lovely national parkland on the way to the university.

The other day I saw a four-foot goanna lizard ambling across the trail and then climbing a gum tree. Yesterday I lifted my bike up and over a lineup of 100+ processionally caterpillars, following each other head to tail in an unbroken line across the bike path. I hear kookaburra laughter, smell the damp-lemon smell of eucalyptus trees, see the rainbow sherbet flashes of color from darting lorikeets.

Every day I pass by grey kangaroos standing nearly as tall as my shoulders, watching me drowsily as I pass by, their babies peeking out from their still-weird-as-hell-no-matter-how-many-times-I-see-them belly pouch.

A car would cut my daily commute from 30 minutes to 20 minutes. But at what cost?

And for what benefit?

That’s right: comfort!

But if comfort doesn’t increase happiness, can it really be considered a benefit at all?

For what it’s worth, my point isn’t that everyone should bike to work in the rain and if you don’t then you’re a foolish comfort-chaser. For some people this is a literal impossibility, for others it’s just not a choice that makes sense for their lives or circumstances.

My point is that often in my life I’ve made choices in the pursuit of comfort — or, more accurately, I’ve made sacrifices in the pursuit of comfort — without ever consciously acknowledging the fact that comfort doesn’t actually improve our happiness beyond having our basic needs met.

Researches have studied the happiness of people at different income levels. They found that it does increase when we get more income, but only to the point that we can afford basic needs without significant financial stress. After that, going from $150,000 to $300,000 a year, or $300,000 to $3 million a year, does absolutely nothing to increase perceived happiness — despite all the extra comfort all that money can buy.

So I’ll keep biking to work in the rain, thank you very much.

And I’ll try to remember to bring spare underwear.