The Comfort Trap

The comfort trap, or by its more popular moniker; First World Problems. Yes, the privileged , the rich, the upper middle class are mostly fall victim to the comfort trap. I'm not trying to get all motivational and inspirational, I'm just pointing out what I see. 

The poor and destitute have their own traps, but that's for another post. One might say, "What problems do the rich and privilege have? they can just buy their way out!" And while that is most definitely true, I maintain that they cannot buy their way out of the comfort trap because they aren't even aware they're in the comfort trap in the first place.

They were born into the comfort trap. Their entire lives, reality, and existence is the comfort trap, and its precisely why they can buy their way out of their problems that they're in the comfort trap in the first place.

Care broke down? Something in the house broke down? They just pay someone to fix it, while everyone else either has to go through the hard work of first learning to fix it, then actually fixing it themselves, those in the comfort trap do not.

When the adversity comes for the rest of us, we can't seek comfort, because we don't have the money to do so, but when adversity comes to the rich and privileged, they can go take a two week vacation in a different country. They can sit in their house all day because they don't worry about bills. They can drink themselves halfway to death because they can afford bottles of alcohol.

How to spot someone in the comfort trap? see how they respond to adversity.

In the military, you can spot them immediately. As soon as something gets hard, they flee. 

There was this airmen who came from an rich family, and when he arrived at his first base, and an NCO told him to take out the trash, he started wiggling his body, stomping his feet, huffing and puffing, like he was a 12 year old child throwing a temper tantrum.

How do you get out of the comfort trap? Well first, you recognize you're in it and then you seek out hard things and do them. You face them. You do not run away to comfort. Same thing with your children. It's why the children of famous actors and athletes don't respond well to adversity, it's because they were born in the comfort trap. Their parents, who were poor, were not born in the comfort trap. They were forced to face adversity. They had no comfort to run to.

Their kids, however, had comfort to run to, and thus, like the bible says: 

"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."