The persistent desire for comfort

Here's a thing a noticed when I had a tooth go wrong. Having toothache was annoying and I wanted the pain to go away, but I also noticed that there was an implicit assumption in my mind that I should always be comfortable. When something unpleasant arises in my mind, there is this instant need to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling and return to a state of comfort. I assume that I should be comfortable all the time.

Then I realised that this can never be true. There is always something arising that takes me away from this place of comfort, especially given the constant problems of illness. So then, what next? Perhaps comfort is not all it's cracked up to be, perhaps there is something more satisfying. Who knows?

From a Buddhist perspective, this is an example of greed, aversion and delusion all operating merrily away in my mind. It's easy to be caught by these things, but it's nice to know that Buddhism has a vast toolkit of techniques to pick through the details.