What Made Comfort Uncomfortable Was a Habit the Body Remembered

Not long ago, I had a very welcome reunion.

I happened to run into the professors who had taught me during my residency.

As we sat face to face after such a long time and talked about this and that, memories from those days naturally came up.

Among the stories brought out from those laughter-filled memories, the standout by far was

“the legend of those days.”

As a first-year resident, it was, in a word, a chaotic time.

Everything was unfamiliar, and both body and mind were struggling to keep up.

Sleeping two or three hours a day was normal, and I clearly remember collapsing onto the department lounge sofa wearing my white coat, still unable to even take off my tie.

But as time passed, little by little, a sense of ease began to appear.

By the second year, there were days when I could go home and lie down on my bed, and moments when I could even afford the luxury of putting on pajamas.

What’s interesting, though, is that for some people, that very comfort feels so unfamiliar that they can’t fall asleep.

In the end, the story went that they had to put on a dress shirt and tie again, wear their white coat too, and then lie down on the sofa before they could finally fall asleep.

It must be because the tense rhythm of daily life had seeped into the body far too deeply.

It is the moment when familiarity overcomes comfort.

As I listened to that story, scenes from those days naturally came back to me.

The unfamiliar, cold hospital corridors, work that kept piling up without pause, and the odd routines I repeated almost without thinking.

Those moments when I barely squeezed my body onto an old sofa and dozed off in short stretches with my shoulders pressed together have now become rather warm memories.

Come to think of it, this kind of experience doesn’t seem limited to the medical field.

I saw a post in one office worker community that said, “It feels awkward to rest well on the weekend.”

There were also people saying, “When I lie down on my bed at home, I actually can’t sleep, but I’m used to falling asleep face-down on my desk at work.”

At this point, isn’t that less of a habit and more of an art form?

In the end, I find myself thinking that routine is a scary thing.

It takes more time than you might expect for repeated habits to go beyond familiarity and become “comfort.”

That is why I’m reminded once again how important it is to consciously create and maintain good routines.

If sleeping in a tie had become more familiar, then building good habits should definitely be possible too, right?

Thanks to this episode, I’ve been taking another look at my own routine lately.

Maybe the most powerful changes in life begin with turning that kind of “familiarity” into something new.