Comfort In Consistency

Why did the metronome get promoted?

Because it was always consistent—never missed a beat.

Hey, I’m Caleb. Welcome—or welcome back—to my monthly column, Breaking Trail, where we kick things off with a dad joke. Just like this, just because.

This was my “look, world, I finished a thing” post after completing one of the great American thru-hikes, the Pacific Crest Trail.

Near immediately I started getting texts from friends congratulating me and asking two particular questions, typically in the same order:

1. How’s it feel to be done?
2. What was the hardest part?

Each had answers I leveraged to give platitude responses, the ones people expected.

How’s it feel? Incredible — looking forward to simply sitting - eating anything other than a Clif bar or ramen, and downing 2 (or 8) beers.

Hardest part? The rain in Washington—while some of the other sections were harder, technically. The constant rain just kinda zaps you after a few days, especially as it was the final stretch.

Consistency for discovery.

Truthfully, there were more accurate responses but they weren’t the things people wanted to hear. Things like how I’d graduated college and left my job to wander off into the woods with a singular goal and a consistent pattern: wake, eat, walk, eat, walk, eat again, maybe walk some more, sleep. Repeat. Or how my battle with eczema started in the high sierra around my waist because of the friction from the hip belt of my backpack. That’s when it was manageable. But once I started living in rain gear - the battle was lost and it quickly conquered near every inch of me. All I could do was hope it would abate after getting to shower, moisturize, and stay clean. It was hell.

That first true answer has been something I’ve reflected on and carried with me since the thru-hike in a more tangible way than ever before. I crave consistency and, generally speaking, we all do. Consistency is the scaffolding upon which we build our lives and our understanding of the world. Without consistency, we wouldn’t be able to see patterns, we wouldn’t have predictability, we wouldn’t have the structure upon which to branch out and explore or challenge ourselves. Consistency allows us the space and comfort to be inconsistent. We can bend without breaking when we know that this isn’t how it will always be. Consistent practice leads to competence. Consistency allows us to let our guard down and be comfortable.

The two hardest things I’ve done so far in this life were both lessons in consistency:

Thru-hiking and parenthood.

They are also strikingly similar.

Thru-hikers regularly quote Pixar. One line in particular, “just keep swimming.” For us, this obviously meant walking, not swimming, but the resonance is deep. At the end of the day—for all its trials, tribulations, occurrences, and obstacles—a thru-hike is just a very long walk. It’s the consistency of walking on one particular trail, day-after-day, that makes it what it is. I’ve talked to a number of my fellow hikers from the PCT, as well as many others I’ve met who have done the Appalachian Trail or Continental Divide Trail, and one thread emerges – actually doing the thing wasn’t that hard. Certain conditions ebb and flow and there are immensely difficult moments, but as a whole – you just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. The commitment to consistency, the threads from the outside world, or the cessation of a desire to continue – those were the truly hard things. “Doing it” just required consistency, a recognition that this was your life for now; you are a person who lives out of a backpack, sleeps in a tent, smells abhorrent, and walks countless miles every day. If you were okay with that reality and could adapt to it, it wasn’t actually difficult in the sense that most people who gape and feel it’s unimaginable think it would be. Every hiker I spoke with said some variation of the same response when asked about the experience, “Once you made it past the initial discomfort of blisters and sore muscles, once you adapted. It became the most comfortable and communal experience.” Thru-hiking led many of us to feel more comfortable with ourselves, our capabilities, our endurance, and with the fact that there are thousands of others like us who find comfort and bliss in taking a very long walk in the woods.

Consistency for competence.

Consistency is key. This is one of the most common teachings given to any new parent. Either from others who have been through the experience, read parenting books, or perused online forums. Kids need consistency. Which makes complete sense. Here this infant is, fresh-faced in the world picking up an unimaginable amount of stimuli. If they don’t have some level of consistency and baseline upon which to build, how will they ever begin to understand the world around them. If the PCT led me to learn the most about myself, parenting has made me learn the most about what it means to be a person. Raising a small human is an awe-inspiring experience because it brings you back to the basics. To our original operating systems. When working with them, gone out of the window are all the heuristics you’ve built, all of the mental shortcuts, that you as a parent, have from years of learned experiences. You are back to the basics, you are seeing the world for what it is and trying to make it make sense to someone who doesn’t have any of your understandings, learned experiences, or trauma.

Much like thru-hiking, crafting a consistent schedule as a parent allows you to regain your sanity. You begin to build practice and form rituals where the kids know what to expect. Sometimes, it even means they’ll fight you less over things like naptime, or needing to brush teeth, because they know that is a consistent part of their day. It’s expected. They know when they can play, when they have to behave, when they get to be a minion of chaos. They come to anticipate times when they can color, when they can play music, and when they have to sleep. By crafting this consistency, you also open up space for them to see inconsistencies.

“Dad, what’s that?”

I hear this question about 2,305 times a day (hyperbolic? maybe, maybe not). Nearly every time it’s asked, I look up, see what she’s asking about and respond, “you know what that is.” She responds, “It’s XYZ.” I respond, “yea, good job.” She beams. She needs to know the answer is still the same, and she is right in her answer. She’s 3 years old, she’s building self-confidence. Occasionally, though, I will look up and see it’s something new, something she hasn’t seen before. I always know when this will be the case, too, because her intonation while asking the question is different; more inquisitive. I know this because of how consistent this question is with the patterns I have begun to identify. She knows, she’ll always get an answer out of me either way. When it’s genuinely something new, we both stop and I identify what it is and try to explain its place in the world. I get to watch in real time as she catalogues this new bit of information with an “ohhh, okay” or “woah”.

As we’ve consistently played out this exchange thousands of times, I’ve begun to notice that the truly inquisitive variation only appears when we’re doing something routine and something is “out of place.” An inconsistency is identified, thus we become inquisitive.

Consistency for comfort.

I firmly believe two concepts have led us to become the dominant species on this planet. Adaptability and Innovation. Furthermore, I believe both of these are born out of the same human truth - we thrive with consistency. We are comfortable when things are consistent, and we crave comfort.

We (the royal we of humanity at large) do not often “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” we change in steps. We adjust slowly, finding the pieces of our “new reality” that cause the most discomfort and alter them first, we don’t change every single part of our structure. We are able to make these adjustments and adapt to new realities because our innate need for consistency. We rebuild a new version of “what was” that continues to allow us to live our lives in some form of comfort while adjusting for the newness of our new reality.

Innovation, on the other hand, is born out of curiosity and of asking ourselves, “what if?” Science is built upon consistency — it’s not a scientific fact if it cannot be replicated. Furthermore, inconsistency is often the spark for curiosity. Only when everything has a place can we notice what is inconsistent.

It’s what breeds predictability, which breeds comfort. Comfort is defined as a state of ease, or a lack of hardship. If something is consistently hard, we adjust or avoid, and find a new baseline or definition of comfort. We adapt. Crafting consistency is the hard part. Adapting and finding innovative ways to adjust your comfortable, consistent reality to the new one you are either pursuing or reacting to — that is what is uncomfortable. Because adjustment is hard.

Change is hard.

Consistency is the key to buoying yourself through change — to adapting. Consistency is what allows steadiness, comfort, and predictability to re-emerge. You cannot manage change by adding more change, but you can adapt and manage change by creating comfort in consistency.

Cheers,

Caleb

P.S. In addition to opening this column each month with a dad joke, I’ll be closing them with a musical coda—songs and lyrics I feel touch on the theme of the essay.

Musical CODA:

Slow Burn by Kacey Musgraves.

Key, relevant lyrics:

“Old soul, waiting my turn / I know a few things, but I still got a lot to learn”