On Physical Exhaustion and Discomfort

Excerpt from the 1938 book, Lhasa: The Holy City, by F. Spencer Chapman.

It is curious what vicarious pleasure one derives from physical exhaustion and discomfort. It is a strange paradox that the more intolerable a journey is at the time, the more satisfactory does it become in retrospect. Our sensibilities and characters were made to be sharpened against the hard forces of Nature.  But how few people nowadays get any chance to test their physical endurance to breaking-point, to feel cold fear gnawing at their hearts, or to have to make decisions that hold life and death in the balance? That is why men flock so easily to war; to test a manhood that is perverted by the present state of civilization. Rugby football, mountaineering, ski-ing, even motoring, are but makeshifts for this vanished birthright; narcotics to alleviate the monotony of existence that has become too safe and easy.

h/t: Alpha Ideas