Getting comfortable with discomfort

Another day, another news story about an attempt to remove from schools or libraries any book that might make a student "uncomfortable."

You know what makes me uncomfortable? Reading news stories about people trying to remove books that might make other hypothetical people uncomfortable.

Also peach skin--the fuzziness makes me uncomfortable. Big trucks barrelling down the highway right on my tail make me uncomfortable. Overuse of boldface in a document makes me uncomfortable, and a document that combines underlining and italics makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Learning the new software we're using for student advising makes me uncomfortable. Students who think anything that happened before the year 2000 is prehistoric make me uncomfortable, as do those who refer to prose written in 1921 as "Old English." 

This is just the tip of the iceberg of things that make me uncomfortable, but you know what? I'm still gonna eat that peach and drive on that highway and read that document and use that software and teach those students, because sometimes the rewards are worth a little discomfort.