It’s an irony that vacations – which many of us associate with entertainment and comfort – can be so uncomfortable and boring. By the time we make it home through the delayed flights or trains and the clogged roads and the long lines and the screaming children (yours or someone else’s), you feel like you need a vacation to recover from your vacation.

When I started to meditate this morning, The Cat, who had been hanging out on the back of the couch waiting for a neighborhood pigeon to be stupid enough to land on the sill outside the open window again, put her cute little paws on my shoulder and slid down my chest into my lap.

Doesn’t that sound comfortable, to meditate with a warm, furry cat in your lap?

Except that my lap wasn’t shaped the way The Cat wanted it to be and my hands were in the way, and I needed to reposition myself to make my lap comfortable for The Cat. (The Cat expresses her displeasure with tooth and claw.) So then I wasn’t comfortable.

And that’s okay. Meditation isn’t about being comfortable. It’s about practicing being where you are (and not writing blog posts, Libby!). It isn’t always peaceful. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it’s boring.

It’s a lot like life, that way.

Going to school can make us feel bored and uncomfortable. Being in social situations where we don’t know anyone can make us feel bored and uncomfortable. Speaking up in meetings at work can make us feel uncomfortable. Voting can be boring and uncomfortable. Jury duty can be boring and uncomfortable (especially in New York where the bathrooms are the 9th circle of hell). Sometimes marriage is uncomfortable. Raising children can be boring and uncomfortable. Going to doctor’s offices, exercising, preparing healthy food: boring, uncomfortable.

Life is boring and uncomfortable.

Somewhere along the line, people got the feeling that it should be something other than that. I could blame social media, all the people who post fake stories about how their life is all roses and strawberries and they created this ideal life where they could live an enviable life without ever being bored or uncomfortable.

But meditation has been around for thousands of years before social media.

So this is really more about human nature.

We like being interested and comfortable. We dislike being bored and uncomfortable. We hate it so much that we will make lots of excuses to avoid it. We will even pretend we’re meditating while our pre-frontal cortex entertains itself with writing blog posts or working or winning arguments we had the day before and just didn’t have the right words at the time to prove we were right – but now we do and ha!

Oh wait, thinking.

Growth, for us, comes from spending time being bored and uncomfortable.

Want to be a better writer? Sit down and write, even though a blank page makes you feel bored and uncomfortable. Want to be a better public speaker? Get up and speak, even though it makes you feel uncomfortable because you’re not good at it yet. Want to get healthier? Make yourself exercise and take the time to do the boring work of chopping vegetables and cooking them and eating them, although all that is soooooo boring sometimes. Want to get ahead at work? Show up and talk to people who make you feel uncomfortable and speak up in those boring meetings. Want to be a better spouse or parent? Do the boring things (like picking up your socks from the middle of the living room, ahem) and have the uncomfortable conversations.

Yeah, you’re going to make mistakes. Half of what you write will never see the light of day. Some of your speeches will fall flat – thud! You’ll miss a day of exercise or burn the vegetables. When you speak up meetings, you may not be as eloquent as you’d like or there may be an awkward moment of silence and then they’ll keep talking as if you’re not in the room.

And that will make you feel uncomfortable. Or bored.

Even practiced meditators write about the challenges of accepting boredom and discomfort while meditating. They speak about the challenges of letting go of attachment to engagement and comfort.

That’s why they keep meditating!

Meditation is a practice. Not a performance.