Second only to the words "raw" and "authentic" comes "comfort zone" which should only be used if you are describing your latest mattress from the big box store. Otherwise, anything described as raw, authentic or outside your comfort zone simply paints you as the ultimate poseur.
Despite that, I do think we have a problem with comfort zones in the modern world. We have elevated luxury into a status symbol and live almost 24/7 inside well equipped houses with climate control, and impressive quantities of food (or food like substances) on hand so that we never feel the slightest twinge of hunger, we drive from one curated and groomed location in temperature controlled lavishly comfortable cars, and, on our vacations from this every day life we spoil ourselves by indulging in more of the same except on a grander scale. If this is the way you live, at some point your comfort zone has shrunk to the size of an immeasurably small postage stamp on which you stand marooned.
When almost all of society lives this way, it is truly difficult to recognise that your comfort zone has become a prison. One of my young relatives recently mentioned to me that she and her husband needed a second car because she was "trapped at home" while her husband was at work with the car. They live three minutes walk from the train station in a city with some of the best public transit in the world and last time I looked she had a functioning pair of legs. If you are "trapped" in this circumstance you have most definitely made your own prison.
Dave Macleod writes a lot about comfort zones when coaching rock climbers. His excellent book 9 out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes might almost be read as a short treatise on the importance of doing things that are difficult for you on a regular basis. The more you expand beyond your boundaries, feel discomfort or even fear, the larger becomes the arena in which you can operate without becoming paralysed by apprehension or "trapped" by circumstance. I fear that for many people in the modern world, simply skipping a meal or a snack and feeling true hunger is enough of a move outside their nesting box to start with. But as many people before me have said, start where you are.
But this is primarily an outdoor adventure blog, so what have I done recently that pushed me a little. On Wednesday, with a forecast 4 to 5 metre long period swell we paddled from our home beach around to a couple of our favourite surf spots. The first spot we hit provided some easy long rides to warm up and then we moved to another location where we were catching fantastic long rides from the point all the way into the breakwater. I am always a little anxious surfing as my roll is not bomber and there is something truly panic inducing about being upside down in a kayak as waves knock the boat around, and, there is always the long and looming swim of shame.
Next day, with a cracking northeasterly wind at a steady 20ish knots, our friend Nick suggested a paddle out to North Head and back on an upwind-downwind run. With an underlying two metre long period swell it was an exciting and challenging paddle over to North Head from our home bay. The sea was lumpy and when we finally got to some minimal shelter near the Three Isle Point the swell rolling in was very large and the wave tops were being blown off in long plumes.
Nick was having the time of his life, while I was thinking this was definitely some type 2 fun. I would hate to capsize and blow a roll in these conditions because losing your boat in the wind is not hard to imagine. My paddle stroke on the way over was literally shit, as I kept air paddling when the water disappeared below the boat and I had a super short and highly ineffective stroke going. It reminded me of major thrutch sessions I have had on rock climbs that are too hard for me when I just start flailing and scrabbling, clawing upwards with my finger nails, anything to avoid falling off. But, of course, we made it and the zone in which I can operate without the whites of my eyes rolling back moved outwards just a little.
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