Getting uncomfortable...

In the book I am reading, written by the co-creator of the tv show, The Ghost Whisperer, the author states that no ghost he has ever communicated with has said he wished he were alive again. When I was working in social services, I dealt with kids who were in pretty bad home situations. More than a few times I had to call children's services to report their claims. And, every time the children were actually taken away, which luckily only happened a couple of times, the children were devastated. One would think that they would have been thrilled to leave an abusive situation. But even if foster care meant staying in a mansion in the Hollywood hills, they would've been miserable. Because we cling to familiarity. Our lives may be horrible, but the unknown- regardless of the fact that it could be better- is terrifying.

Likewise with life. Not that life is always horrible, but it's like we have these visions of heaven as perfect, with no pain and no sadness. Yet, we would fight to the death anyone who tried to take our life from us. We would do things we never thought we would just to preserve our current state of being. If Heaven is so great why aren't we excited to leave Earth and go there? Because it's the unknown.

Likewise with thought. We are each used to living in our own minds. We are thus attracted to like minds and build up our families and social circles with people of similar mental wavelengths. We get so used to living in our own created world that when we venture outside, out of our comfort zone, we are taken aback by the fact that not everyone lives and thinks the way we do. My favorite line from the movie Juno is "I never realize how much I like being home unless I've been somewhere really different for a while". Familiarity breeds comfort, but it also generates staleness of thought. It's like living in a world of all yellow. It's cool for a while but eventually you want some blue in your world. You don't have to become it, but just to be near it makes the yellow all that more beautiful.


"There is no growth in the comfort zone, and no comfort in the growth zone."