Being uncomfortable is no fun. Guess what? Life is uncomfortable. I think there is something telling that the very first thing most human beings do when they are born is cry. I have to say "most" because our youngest decided that his first act upon entering the world would be to empty his bladder all over the labor room...then cry. When you gotta go, you gotta go -- kid had his priorities straight. Child birth, for both mother and baby, is an excruciating experience. And, in just a split second during the process, babies are forced to deal with being uncomfortable for the first time. It's not like they can return to the womb in protest, right? So in the moment babies are born, they figure out that crying seems like the next best thing. It's their way of telling the world, "Yo, for real, I am not comfortable."This is how we begin our lives -- and it is guaranteed that it will not be the last time we will feel this way. Life is hard and it is uncomfortable. Over the course of time, we each ostensibly adopt other techniques (hopefully in addition to crying) to deal with the feeling of discomfort when we experience it. It is how we learn, how we grow, and how we live.This has simply been a fact of life throughout human history. From what I am observing, for whatever reason these days intolerance is becoming an increasingly acceptable way to deal with discomfort. When something doesn't go the way we like or anticipated, people are now stopping and declaring "that makes me uncomfortable" and expecting that the world will instantly soothe them.I heard this a number of times in a bunch of different contexts this past week. Work, personal life, kids, on television. It happens everywhere and seems to be impacting us all physically, emotionally and socially to our detriment. Our collective natural tolerance and resilience to discomfort seems to be at all time low.I'm sure there are a number of factors that contribute to this happening: from technological advances in medicine seemingly able to alleviate whatever physical or emotional pain we experience; to advances in personal technology that makes it easy for us to hide behind whatever public persona we choose to create for ourselves instead of dealing with things and people directly; to "helicopter" and "lawn mower" parents hovering and clearing obstacles from the paths of their children in order to ensure that they never experience adversity. As we all learned in our first moments on the planet, life is inherently uncomfortable. Simply eliminating the things that create discomfort altogether will not make everything better -- it effectively makes us numb. And while I believe it is incumbent upon us to be sensitive, empathetic, respectful and open to assisting those who are dealing with real adversity, I'd also like to see us get back to embracing life's challenges more directly instead of wishing (or demanding) they would go away. So perhaps instead of saying "that makes me uncomfortable" and expecting others to make things right for us in the moment, we say "that makes me uncomfortable" and look to ourselves to figure out what we need do to make things right now and in the future.Shared some articles I think you are going to really like this week, Friends. Take a look and enjoy. Have a great weekend.XOXODave