At The Table

Corina Chen is an English and Linguistics double major who loves telling stories and helping others tell their own.

“Are you wearing a wig?” I blurted out. I was six, maybe seven years old at the time. Our server blushed furiously, retreated to the kitchen, and for the rest of the meal at Sweetie Pie’s, we enjoyed a new server’s attention. My sisters laughed uproariously while I basked in the admiration of our family friends.

“I can’t believe you said that,” the older brother of my best friend said, grinning. Because I was six and my idea of starting a romance was as simple as talking to the opposite sex, I was thrilled. Our server, we’d reasoned only minutes before, had a head of lush, grey curls—a sign of aging, perhaps—sitting atop a youthful face—a clear sign of youth. Obviously, distinguishing between age, good genetics, or potentially dyed hair was simply too great a dilemma to solve with conjecture. Forget making the server uncomfortable with the wig question—I was being found hilarious, and for that, I was thriving.

Looking back, I can see how I was probably the root of another person’s insecurities. I also realize how uncomfortable a situation that was for the server—and probably my parents. A table full of tittering children, laughing at another person’s physical appearance.

We are often our own self-starters when it comes to uncomfortable situations. Whether it’s something we say, don’t say, or something we do, awkward moments are a constant experience. They rise when we find we lack the right words to comfort or confront, and they linger when we are unable to mediate a situation. More often than not, uncomfortable situations come up because so many of us are still learning the difference between humor and grace, thoughtfulness and silence.

Being an instigator of awkward situations hits harder because I’ve always loved comfort.

As a kid, in addition to being so blunt, I was also severely dedicated to the six blankets I constantly dragged around. Like Linus from the Peanuts comic strips, I always had my security blanket with me. Whenever I took a nap, every single one was swathed around my body until I looked as though I was in a small nest. So many blankets suggest I’m constantly cold—which is true—but also point to a greater, more basic fact: I love comfort.

We are born craving comfort. From thumb-sucking to naps—a habit often savored into adulthood—we insert comfort into our day to day without much thought. Comfort becomes a given. And, as such, people who love inflicting or experiencing pain are called sadists or masochists, respectively, and are a unique, rather terrifying exception.

How much pain we can handle is often measured with the question, “What’s your pain tolerance?” People who can tolerate lots of pain are like my mom—their pain becomes invisible in the specter of their endurance—while people more sensitive to it reveal their burdens more quickly. Whatever end of the spectrum we fall on, high pain tolerance or low, is still in direct conflict with our aversion to discomfort and our desire for ease.

Several years ago, I heard a sermon about getting sticky. We were reminded to move past the comfortable limit of small talk, condolences, or quick lunches—as important as they are—and be willing to press into the less easy moments that take more time. Getting sticky is a complete contradiction to avoiding pain. The stickiness of undeserved blame, inadvertently hurt feelings, or poor decision making is hard to rub off. The longer our hands are in the mess, the more pain we are encouraged to tolerate.

I watched as my parents visited their dying friend in hospice, willing to wade through the literal, uncomfortable silence of sitting with a man who had lost his ability to speak. At other times, I talked with a childhood friend who was willing to call me out on my bullshit: painful then, but a gift now.

It is in the stickiness I learned, as my pastor encouraged me, that closeness and change are forged in the spaces of discomfort. Change can’t occur in a vacuum. Rather, the chance to impact, say, the people on the fringe, or the classmate who lacks social skills, comes when we are willing to draw near. Talk to them. Help shed their discomfort by taking it on ourselves, so they feel more comfortable.

This principle of discomfort for another’s ultimate comfort isn’t new. It’s learned. An impulse to draw near to another in their ickiness is completely opposite to our natural instinct for comfort. It is far easier for us to flee the room than stay seated. I only began learning to sit in another’s discomfort when I was the recipient of such examples. This lesson in empathy was highlighted for me when I realized my abnormalness for crying—often in public spaces. I cry with great abundance. The student union, gym, walk back from class, or even Target—they’ve all seen my tears—and they don’t all come with free tissues.

Yet in those moments of freefall, when I can’t contain my struggles, I find that my roommate stops her work to listen, my friend lends me her room to rest in, and my sister shares her own stories to help me with mine. Thrust into my pain, they make uncomfortable choices to comfort me. My best friends give me grace before guilt, help rather than hell. (And always tissues for my tears.) My older sister sticks around my stickiness. Unlike the waiter I embarrassed when asking about his wig, she would rather serve my table than leave.