I bought a plane ticket to London yesterday. I leave November 8th, and will be spending four days in London. Who am I going with? No one. Why? Couldn't find anyone to go with? Nope. Didn't even ask. I want to go alone. I could not be more excited about getting to do whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like it. I can't wait to see the city and spend my evenings sitting in a pub somewhere, talking to locals or reading a book or whatever I feel like doing.
Why am I going to London? Because I can. Why am I going alone? Because I can. I'm going to Rome and maybe Amsterdam by myself, too. I have my hostel booked and a map and a list of some things I want to see. And we'll see what comes my way.
I have been learning a lot while studying abroad. One of the big things is: You don't need a reason to step outside your comfort zone.
I needed to study abroad for a semester before I realized that I didn't need to study abroad to come to Europe. I could have flown over here any time I felt like it. I didn't even need someone to go with me. I didn't need a reason. The world is out there... If you want to, you can just go.
Why is that so hard for us to understand? Why is it so hard to wrap our brains around the fact that things are significantly less complicated than we make them? More often than not, the only thing standing in our way is us.
Stepping outside your comfort zone is terrifying. It is unknown and it feels so unsafe. We do everything in our power to stay within our comfort zones, to justify staying where we are because the alternative would require more faith than we want to have. Coming to Europe was outside my comfort zone. Wandering around a foreign city all by my lonesome was definitely outside it, too. Sitting by myself in a coffee shop, in a country where no one does anything alone, with people looking at me funny because I am the weird foreign girl? That used to be uncomfortable for me, too.
We are too comfortable. We are comfortable in our habits, and are so unwilling to change them, to step outside them, that we can't even see what's out there. We can't see beyond the white picket fences of our lives. It has gotten to the point that we don't even realize we have comfort zones, or that stepping outside of them is even an option. We have become passive and uncaring and timid.
"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline."
2 Timothy 1:7
Timidity is our comfort zone. It is only when we step outside of it that we embrace the power, love and self-discipline that we were intended for. Did you know that you don't need a reason to stop for a moment and talk to that co-worker that is having a bad day? Did you know that you don't need a reason to buy coffee for a stranger? Or to talk to the person on the street?
Those things you know you should do, but don't, because they make you uncomfortable? Or those things that you think, 'It's nice that they do that, but I could never do it myself?' This is where timidity comes in, by convincing us that someone else will do whatever makes us uncomfortable. By belittling what we are capable of.
Timidity promises comfort. Timidity keeps us paralyzed. And yet, it is timidity that we always regret in hindsight.
Our lives were never intended to be comfortable. In fact, we are promised that they will be difficult. But we are also promised that, in the giving up of life (of our vice grip on our comfortable lives,) we will find real life. A life of power and love and self-discipline.
Something I would challenge you to think about, as I consider it as well, is what is your comfort zone? What kinds of things challenge you to step outside of it? And what is your reaction when something threatens that comfort?
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