After writing yesterday’s blog I realized, I want to grow. I want to push myself beyond my comfort zone. I’ve been racking my mind trying to figure out an adventure for my life, and it dawned on me yesterday, after reading about the adventures of another, that an adventure is built on emotions, not events. I am not seeking to build a resume of grand achievements, but to live a life feeling absolutely alive. This feeling, I realized, comes from pushing myself past my current comfort zone, and discovering new areas of myself. In my own life, I have experienced this many times, but have always pointed to the event as what produced the emotion, and so have resorted to trying to duplicate it. But it’s never the same.
A couple years ago, I was at the river with my family and my mom wanted to tow me on an inner tube behind a wave runner. The thought of this scared me to death. I knew she’d be trying to get me to fall off, and swing me around like crazy. Now I have always had a fear of fish. The kind of fear that makes a person be able to walk on water to reach the safety of land. I did not want to go. But in that moment, I suddenly saw myself as an adventurer, and I jumped in the tube. Sure enough, my mom drove like a maniac, and I screamed the entire time, until finally being dumped in the water. That moment meant a lot to me. It grew my heart in some way, and felt exhilarating, because I’d pushed myself past my comfort zone.
Remembering this story, I realized that there will never be a time in my life when I don’t have a comfort zone in the current moment that could be expanded. And in an instant, the adventure I’ve been searching for in the grand void became tangible and real. If I live a life where I constantly challenge my comfort zone, then I think I will feel I am truly living. No matter how small or large these challenges are, they will continue to move me forward. They will continue to arouse that exciting emotion of aliveness. And I will never become stagnant and crust over.
I am so excited about this realization, and I am scheming about what I want to do. But I would also like to take this mentality into life, so that when surprise situations occur where I have a choice to either stretch myself or be comfortable, I will choose to stretch. Who knows what I will achieve? Who knows who I will meet, or where I will go?
This reminds me of a quote from the movie Ever After.
“And while they did live happily ever after, the point gentlemen, is that they lived!”
This is my truth in the moment.
-Tara
