I am comfortable living inside
my box. When I was in utero, I was
inside a closed space, where I was comfortable and warm. Someone else provided for me. After birth, I was well tended to, my parents
provided for me and I had all my needs taken care of by want of only a cry, and
I was comforted. In my youth, I lived
inside a room within a house, a box within a box. My brothers and I had no thought of our needs
not being met; we did not ask for much and were comfortable. We were in a category that went under the
title comfortable; we were an average family.
I went to school, went to college, got a job, got married, bought a
house. When moving into our first house,
someone joked that the kids come next.
On cue, Gabrielle arrived, then Rebecca.
Debbie and I were following the script…and we were comfortable within
this world.
OMG!!! I could have started a paragraph earlier with
a similar story for my father and continued afterward with a paragraph for my
kids – Who’s script are we following?
Have all of our lives become this repetitious pattern following a
predestined path that we are doomed to repeat over and over. Yes, I know…in this pattern, life is safe –
no fears, no unknowns and no excitement.
We tend to live inside the world we create, within a box, and rarely
move to push on the boundaries to expand our world. My wife and I enjoyed eating at a Chinese
restaurant, by an award-winning chef that is 30 minutes from our house. People asked us why we had to travel so far
away to eat Chinese food, there are places closer. They do not have to join us next time we
go. While I like places closer, it gets boring
eating at the same places when there are other choices. We do not mind occasionally stepping outside
our comfort zones. Rebecca, our shy
child, is stepping out of her comfort zone and going to Germany for two
weeks. She is uncomfortable going to a
country where she barely knows the language, but she likes to travel and this
was a great opportunity for her. Go Bec!
We do not live inside of a
Bugs Bunny cartoon, where Bugs continually dares a befuddled Yosemite Sam to
step over the line and we do it. We have
to be cognizant that we are living each day, week, month and year in repetition
and with great intentionality making the choices to step outside the routines
that define our lives. Easy? Absolutely not! If one is comfortable living that cycle of
life, then all is good. It is easy to wait
for somebody to tell us what we should do, rather than take initiative and determine
the actions required. Many years ago, I
had a desire to do some writing and dreamt of becoming a speaker. As the years passed by, I still had the same
desire, but no mystical being appeared in front of me to point the way. I needed to step outside of my personal
comfort zone to make this happen, which I eventually did by deciding to write a
weekly blog and join Toastmasters. I had
to take action to move from daydreaming to realization.
Breaking out is done by what
John C. Maxwell refers to as intentionality, otherwise we never move out of the
rut in our lives. I have talked to
people that continually do the same things every day, month after month, year
after year, and are not very happy with the repetitive routine…OK, sometimes
they outright complain about it. After
releasing their feelings and we say goodbye, inevitably their last words
are always, “I will see you tomorrow.”
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