I was doing my circuit at the gym the other day; seated rowing machine to be exact. When I finished my reps, a guy across the room, seated with his iPad, wearing ear buds, told me to stop breathing so loud. “It’s annoying,” he said.
This was not the first person ever to mention my breathing technique. I’ve explained to others the value of yogic breath: deep, focused inhales and audible exhales. Some feigned interest in my explanation; others could hardly care This was the first guy who complained to the point of telling—not asking—me to stop.
I’m ornery enough not to calmly acquiesce, but smart enough to avoid a shouting match with a gym-lout over a ridiculous demand. I exchanged a comforting eye roll with the other middle-aged guy in the space and curbed my enthusiasm for the rest of the workout.

The encounter reminded me of this terrific article by Kat Rosenfield, “The Illusion of Frictionless Existence” (Boston Globe Ideas 2/22/2023). Ms. Rosenfield’s main focus is Gen Z late-late bloomers, not gym jerks, but the seeds of my encounter exist in her reporting. A world in which individuals exist in a cocoon of their own comfort, and feel entitled to lash out at anything that compromises it, even in the slightest.
Ms. Rosenfield spent ten years authoring a teen advice column (2009-2019). During that time, she was struck by a new line that occurred with increasing frequency in the letters she received. “I shouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable.” Truth is, if you ever want to grow up, you do have to be made to feel uncomfortable, you have to learn how to deal with it and hopefully, to grow from it.
The quest for an easy life, a frictionless life, is as enduring as it has been unattainable for most of human history. For thousands of years, only the rare, the rich, the royal, led lives of anything approaching ease. It was a mere 370 years ago that Thomas Hobbes declared life, “nasty, brutish, and short.” For many, the blossoming Industrial Revolution only made life nastier, brutalier, and shorter. We have only recently achieved the required level of affluence for humans to pursue a life untethered from the nuisance of others.
Add to that affluence our autonomy of communication, initiated by the telephone yet perfected by the smartphone. Individuals of means can meet most of their needs and wants without engaging another face. Contactless pick-up and delivery. Interactions that require no interaction. It’s easier than ever to live without encountering any obstacle.
Avoiding challenges is almost always a good tactic to ride through a moment; but a terrible strategy for leading our lives. When our primary mode is to avoid, we don’t learn how to get along. When we eliminate friction, we don’t develop the skills required to negotiate even the simplest exchanges, like acceptable noise at the gym. No wonder we are so unsuccessful at negotiating the real conflicts of our world.

My greatest disappointment in the expanding pool of people trying to live frictionless lives is not so much that they’re bound to fail (we’re not yet so autonomous that we can actually live in private bubbles), nor that they become irrationally annoyed by the simplest of interferences (like heavy breathing at a gym). My greatest disappointment is how much they miss by not putting themselves out there, for the chance encounter, the opportunity to be fascinated by something they don’t already know.
The two most mind-expanding experiences of my own life – working in Haiti post-2010 earthquake, and bicycling through the United States in 2015-2016—were both premised on consciously putting myself in uncomfortable situations and embracing the experience. I could have retired to a cocoon: I have the resources. But I not have the inclination. Where has that sense of adventure gone from our lives?
My breathing annoyed the guy at the gym and he felt entitled to tell me to stop. Such the pity. How much better if he’d asked, “Why do you do that?” And we could have talked, perhaps learned from each other, perhaps come to appreciate each other. Instead, he dismissed me as an annoyance, which annoyed me. In his quest for no friction: we created friction.