Maybe you’re sad because you’re bored. Have you ever thought about that? Just reach out and try something completely new. Go for a challenge, learn a new sport, pick a different restaurant or go for a comedy movie (if you’re the drama type). Just try it.
Trying something new has also a more deeper meaning: consuming your internal resources in order to force you go out and find some more. If you don’t try something new, you embrace a mindset of conservation. And conservation is just another word for death.
Yes, it requires some effort to get out of your comfort zone. Yes, it involves a risk: you may not like that movie or that new restaurant. But if you carefully analyze yourself, you’ll be surprised to see that the new you feels better overall than the old one, who didn’t take the challenge.
Trying something new is one of the cheapest indulgences you can afford every once in a while.
The Dynamics Of Old And New
There is a subtle tension between settling in a certain space and the need to go out, to break the bubble.
Because, you know, the bubble of comfort is cozy. That place, where we feel protected, nurtured, supported, is a good place. We crave for it. Almost every action we take is directed towards attaining or conserving that space.
Yet, we need to leave that behind. Otherwise something ugly will happen. Too much comfort will put fat on us. And by “fat” I mean symbolic fat, a layer of laziness or inertia. In the beginning, we may not notice it. Just like when we start to put physical fat on our body. A little bit on the belly, just a touch on the ass. It’s ok, it’s not too visible. But as we continue to remain stuck in that comfort space, the fat will become more powerful and will start spreading. Slowly, but firmly.
That fat, that layer of inertia is the very first signal of death. One of the symptoms of being alive is the ability to move from point A to point B. The moment we’re not able to do this anymore, the moment when fat will be more powerful than the need for movement, we’re dead, or at least we will feel like this.
Of course, we may still experience the environment by contemplation, without the need to move, but, as living beings, we’re basically craving for movement, for travel. We need novelty, new sceneries, new challenges, new experiences.
On the other hand, too much change will be confusing. Too much of a travel will postpone the destination indefinitely, hence, we will feel lost. We need to catch our breath every once in a while. Most of the times we need to do this not to rest, but to enforce our own sense of identity. We need to stop and remember who we are.
Unfortunately, we tend to blend into that identity far more than it’s necessary. All we need during those breaks is to just take a breathe or two and then pick the journey up from where we left it.
Alas, we’re not doing it. We’re blending into that identity until we forget that we were traveling in the first place.
So, every once in a while, trying something new will at least prove that we’re still on the move.
further reading
The symbolic fat weighs us down even more than physical fat. Life really gets dull after a while when we don’t expose ourselves to anything new. The problem is, like you said, we get so damn comfortable falling into the same old routine that we don’t realize how boring life has become until we get the excitement of doing something new in our life again.
Great post!