Comfortable.
There are many words which are commonly referred to as positive words that I disagree with. You can see my long rant on the word Hope for an example. Then there’s the fact that I find Moist to be mildly dirty (I blame How I Met Your Mother), and Pointless to be generally derogatory to ANYONE you may be having a discussion with.
COMFORTABLE. This word is the downfall of so many people, even so much as to be extended to peoples as well. Comfortable is a term which I believe has doomed great men to mediocrity, happiness to contentment, purposeful to a meaningless existence. It is comfort that decides that we are ok with the allotment we have been handed, comfort that drove us to believe that what we have is good enough, despite ideas that may drive us to be better than anything we had accomplished so far.
Comfort is what drives us to avoid achievement, to revel in in the idea of simply meeting the bar of expectation. And yet, it’s the very definition of the american dream. White picket fence, three bedroom house, and 2.4 children. The failure of sheepish conformity that defines America as the sad middle-ground of the first world and everything we come to define with what we expect from life.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to see what I can do to break out of my comfort zone. Admittedly, I SUCK at this endeavor. I still like my personal bubble (Uh, dude? You just brushed my arm. Buy me dessert or my wife will totally kick your ass.), and I still tend to watch my words around people I don’t know, especially in public. I can’t go a single day outside my apartment without taking a shower, and I still have to avoid every crack in the sidewalk less be attacked by a metric fuck-ton of guilt over the possibility of causing my mother harm.
On the flip side of that, I also try to travel to somewhere I haven’t been at least once a year, I moved across the county because I was simply done with where I was at the time, and I’ve gone out of my way to make new friends despite the fact that I hit 30 a year ago, a time when most people are instead settling in to habits and deciding what they want car they want to buy for their midlife crisis. Meanwhile, I’m planning the next big trip, debating the merits of our current town or moving away, and working my way up (admittedly slowly) towards swimming in the ocean after a 15 year phobia.
So fuck all of ya’ll.
Comfort is a false dream of settling, something that I decided against a long time ago before I ever met my wife. It came from a very solid foundation that unfortunately has been belittled by modern society but that I’ve come to a conclusion that is actually based in fact.
I’m awesome, and moreso than that, I’m as awesome as I’m willing to make myself. I deserve every single ounce of fucking effort I can put into every single thing I do, and saying that I’m not is only belittling myself and all those around me that care about me.
I (VERY FORTUNATELY) hit this realization a good while before I met my wife. I hit a nice stride where I started treating myself when I was single. I took myself out to dinner at fancy restaurants when I needed congratulations for a job well done; I went by myself to see a movie in a theater that I really wanted to see, regardless of company or someone vilifying my desire; I went on road-trips just to see people that I wished to see, regardless of whether I had company or any other preparations. I made a 10 year plan to move across the country slowly, stopping once a year in a pre-planned state with a good job market to work a menial job and meet people.
It was epic and awesome, and for the first time in a long time, I came to love myself without needing an outside image to confirm my own beliefs in myself.
So when I finally met my wife, I realized something that I don’t think many people did: She was actually someone who was perfect for me. She was not filling some hole I needed at the time, I was not settling for someone in order to avoid being alone, and I was not simply conforming to some societal standard of being a couple. I was completely whole and happy by myself. And she somehow made me happier. Not more complete, but more something that I could not have been should I have been without her.
This isn’t some belief in destiny, or fated to meet or anything like that. This was a simply one in a million chance that I was actually ready for, since I had taken the time to develop what that actually was.
Now I don’t think my way is the best way; a lot of people have met “the one” in their own special way. My point is there’s a necessity in breaking habits. No matter how you do anything, whether it’s meeting someone, taking a job, deciding what kind of food it is you really love, nothing will ever be your own personal truth until you break your idea of what’s comfortable or safe and actually make an informed decision based on experience, not inferences or references.
I’ve said this often, in hundreds of formats. Take a look at your worst case scenario. If the worst thing that can happen is that you have to pick up the pieces and start over, then take the risk. Starting over, in almost every situation, can lead to new perspectives that can give you a boost towards a happiness that is forever lost in the American dream of comfort.
Stop looking at the worst case scenario as a sure thing, and start looking at the good that can come from a 10% chance. This isn’t a speech to tell you to go gamble on the lottery. I’m telling you to gamble on yourself, to believe in yourself, and to believe in your own happiness, instead of the happiness you’re told is what you’re destined to get. Destiny or fate or karma, should you believe, is only a stepping stone. Who you are dependent not on what the universe gives you, but what you do with it.
Cave Johnson said it best in these regards. Make the universe rue the day it gave you lemons.
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