Throw out your couch?

Comfortable cushions. Enticing soft pillows scattered about.
A big hunky piece of furniture setting the scene of a room. A room that we dedicate towards living.
It begs you to sit down on it. Take a load off. You had a long day. You deserve it!

So we imbibe. We participated in the magnetism from the couch. It's relaxing. We start to slowly sink into the cushions. We get comfortable. We turn on the glowing screen in front of us. Time starts to speed on by.

The longer we stay on the couch, the harder it is to get off. Our bodies and minds slow down. Comfort is a curious creeping creature. Just one more show. Just one more hour. The couch starts to pull us in. Like a heavy quicksand device. Comfort becomes a destination and a lifestyle!

Funny how we have been so accustomed to having this big piece of furniture in the center of the living area. Most of the time it faces a television. It's a symbol of leisure and escape from the modern and rigid lives that we live. It's an object of lethargy and complacency. It's how you look it, but when the couch plays such a vital role in how we organize our living spaces, it starts to look a little more concerning than one might think.

The couch is a physical manifestation of the comfortable culture of complacency we have conveniently built around us. A symbol of slothful demise. The attraction to the softness of leisure. The longer we sit, the harder it is to get up. Why get up when you can do things you think you need to do...tomorrow! Procrastination nation. It invites us to spread and sprawl out or invite a fellow human to experience the same soupy comfort. It becomes a extension of ourselves. A large external appendage predicated on making us slower and duller. Comfort becomes an attractive mistress.

Our ancestors were consumed by the magic of the night sky because they did not have screens and comfortable couches to distract them. The night sky was a teacher and entertainment in all types of fulfilling ways.

It's not just the couch. The couch is a symbol and manifestation of what we have created. It's all the little and big things that bring us the convenience and comfort sold to us in this late capitalist system. No, capitalism is not to blame. It's just a word and reductionist convenient term to not address the deeper issues. It's more of a symptom to the modernity that we have participated and spoon fed ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution. We must address the root cause(s).

We like things in small and easy to dispose packaging. Loud colors and seductive sayings. Why labor over cooking when we can ride through a drive through and get something quick. What a treat it is to be alive where we can get quick "food" without leaving our vehicle. Satiating every hungry whim and effortless need to satisfy. We put instant gratification as a main part in our lives. We think we are busy, but really we just want things to be more easy and more accessible in a stressful age of sitting in traffic and vacationing from screen to screen.

Life seems a little more comfortable with quite a bit of padding. 

The more stressful our days, the more likely we are to crave the "cushiony" magnetism of the couch. We want to escape the drudgery of the routine and consume. Living vicariously through the stories of people on screen. It's all by design. To draw us in wanting more. We start to see ourselves in the fictional characters and stories on the flat screen in front of us. Now, we are even more impatient. If a whole season of "Dating a Fish" is not on all at once, we get agitated. Got forbid we have to wait for the next show. We want it all and we want it now as Mr. Mercury sang with rambunctious fanfare.

Funny how we are so quick to escape into fiction and the real life struggles of other people's lives. Our lives might not seem so bad when we get absorbed in the drama of a true crime narrative. Maybe our jobs aren't so bad. Maybe traffic is just part and parcel of living in a sardine like mechanized mecca. If we compare what we think of our lives to to the lives of others, we can start to feel better about our own misery. Maybe stepping into a violent and dramatic narrative can put things into perspective for us. For a little while...

It's easy to escape into comfort and not address the problems we have created for ourselves. It's in these moments where we can make more conscious decisions. It might not even take any radical moves. We all know that getting too strict and disciplinarian overnight can cause us to spring back into old habits. Some people do well with going cold turkey, but may just go back to their old ways if they don't address the underlying problems that got them there in the first place. Stuffing an issue down and acting out some new lifestyle, only makes the issue stronger and more stealthy. What you resist, persists. And what persists can surely come back and bite you in the rear.

Putting a leash on the neck of our insecurities is no way to get things done either. Our proverbial hands can get tired from all the wrangling of our old habits and lethargic tendencies. It's all about the relationship we have with our sense of self. Trying to change our sense of self is rather counter intuitive and rather ironic. It is the sense of self trying to validate and change it's own being. Trying to get rid of ego is the ego playing tricks and strengthening itself. The desire to be rid of one's own sense of self acts the same way as if one would want to change their sense of self. It's all illusory. All bells, whistles, masks, strings and pulleys.

Back to the couch. If we see the couch as an extension and a reflection of who we think we are, then we can start to see why we spend some much time on it in the first place. Are we placing slothfulness and comfort over our own potential? Are we choosing passivity and complacency over growth and self knowledge? Are we being inquisitive when we are laying or sitting on the couch? Do we feel slower and more dull when we spend so much more time on the couch? It is the questions we ask ourselves that can open up on who we think we are. Are we ever really conscious when we plop our rear ends on those cushions? Do we just reach for the remote without thinking about it? Well, think about it.

The couch is a symbol and tool for the lifestyle we make for ourselves. Sometimes we just fall into it and think that we need it. We have been sold that it is a necessity for the places we live in. Conditioned to think we need a heavy soft thing in a room where we tune out and escape the madness just outside of our front doors.

Can we live without a couch? Certainly. When do we even question the need for a couch? We just think that we need a couch because we have been conditioned to think that we need one. Our posture would certainly improve. We can step away from that soul sucking furniture hole of leisure and organize our domestic lives around health and discovery. Certainly people LIVED before without couches.

Maybe throwing out your couch is too radical. Too extreme. It almost feels like another person in your life. Your in a comfortable relationship with the modern device for Pete's sake. We don't want to admit it. What will we ever do? Where can we even sit? You can always sit in less comfortable chairs. That way you cannot sit for you long. If sitting is the new smoking, then sinking into the couch is close to a death sentence. A slow descent into laziness and complacency. It's all what you make of it. If the couch is a valuable and constructive part of your life, who is to say that someone knows better? We must step aside and see what relationship we have built with the couch and how it aligns with our goals, dreams and values.

DG