The Difference Between Discomfort and Danger

Recently, I spoke with Melissa Arnot, a woman who summited Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. That is, she climbed to the literal top of the world while her body suffocated. What struck me more than the feat itself was what Melissa said about why she did it: not to prove she was a hero, but to find out whether she could survive as she really was.

There’s a quiet distinction here, one I’ve spent much of my life learning to recognize: the difference between discomfort and danger.

I don’t mean the difference between putting your hand on a hot stove and being a little chilly in the morning. I mean the difference between psychological, spiritual, emotional, or physical discomfort—the kind that helps you grow—and actual existential threat. The kind of threat that should make you turn and run.

The problem is, sometimes they feel exactly the same. For many years after I was released from prison, discomfort felt like danger to me, and danger felt like home. As I write about in FREE: My Se…