Comfort

"Anxiety is a glimpse of your own daring" Wise words from Maria Shriver on a feeling most people get when they start to attempt something outside of their comfort zone.  And who came up with this idea of a comfort zone, how is it that we're instinctually okay with some things but not others?  I'm not sure how I know that karaoke would be a terribly anxiety-riddled idea for me to have, but I do which according to Maria Shriver means I should most definitely give it a try, although I'm sure anyone in the audience at the time will be cursing the day I ever read that quote... Regardless I have mixed feelings about comfort.  There is nothing besides a hot shower when you're feeling under the weather that is better than a steaming mug of hot chocolate while you curl up in your flannel pajamas that your grand-parents got you two years ago and no longer cover your ankles with one of those dusty leather-covered classics you're required to read for school.  Being comfortable is practically a life-style for me and those flannel pajamas, yeah I own some and I'm fairly certain the puritans would not approve of the amount of ankle showing when I wear those bad boys!

However, there are certain times where comfort is overrated.  For instance, I went white-water rafting one year with my family and I was terrified!  I'm talking crippling anxiety, honestly though you're willingly entering rapids filled with bone-crushing rocks with the only thing separating you being a raft you're not even strapped into... so I thought it was pretty justified.  Needless to say I sat in the middle of the raft fearing for my life practically the whole time.  By the end, I decided to try one rapid on the edge and I never went back.  We went rafting again the next year and I was right there with everyone else paddling furiously through a class 5 rapid and loving every minute of it.  Don't get me wrong, I still get anxious at the thought of activities that threaten my very existence, but if that experience taught me anything it's that you might live to see another day if you stay in the middle of the raft, but are you really living?  This summer I'm trying to do something new everyday and now when I get anxious about an idea rather than dismiss it prematurely I just think of that raft and Maria Shriver shaking her head at me and I push forward.  I mean come on she was married to the terminator that's pretty freaking intimidating, on a side note I really hope that when the divorce ended she turned to him and said "I WON'T be back" because if not what a waste!  Also, why does rain make everything smell so good?  I'm spiralling here so I'll end with another great quote from William Blake who said "He who would do good to another man must do it in minute particulars" which basically means that if we want to do well unto others we have to strive for the little everyday things rather than the grand gestures.  Now I'm off to drink hot chocolate and read Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, Chelsea Handler's biography, because that's considered a classic right... and it's the perfect rainy day to get comfortable! 

Have a RUN-believable day!

Song suggestion: Black and Blue by Ingrid Michaelson (My only friend who knows how to play the ukelele, you know who you are, learn how to play this by July because that would be epic!)