Acclimating nicely to a wider comfort zone

During the majority of my adulthood, roughing it meant the non-concierge level of the Ritz Carlton. Safely married, gainfully employed, relatively successfully balancing professional life with motherhood, I happily languished under down duvets in balcony cabins on luxury cruise ships. My husband and son, however, were always much more adventurous - the father active with ski patrol and volunteer emergency medical care; the son in soccer, baseball, marching band. Both, individually, willingly, left their “comfort zones” to complete multiple weeks at Outward Bound. I could not imagine anything more absurd.
























My son graduated college and, ever intrepid, drove 3000 miles away (what does that say about my mothering skills?) to begin his first real job off our payroll. I continued my life of minor luxury and major comfort, exchanging gifts like pricey vintage port, personal cooking lessons with noted chefs, and trans-Atlantic cruises with my loving husband.






















I was jerked out of that comfort zone at 11:36 one morning in June 2005. Sudden disasters are called disasters because that’s just what they are. Life crumbled, literally and figuratively. I remember asking my friend Elaine, the first person to my house, “what will I do now”, realizing even then that I meant more than “how do I handle this immediate crisis”. I already knew I did not have the tools to begin to cope with anything outside my comfort zone.























What I’ve discovered since then, however, and exactly because I no longer had that comfort zone, is that I was no longer encircled by my routine conventional comfort fences. Broken through, I have now been swimming with dolphins and sting rays, camped on the Sahara in Bedouin tents and risen at 5:00 am to ride a camel to the top of the dune to view the sunrise, climbed Machu Picchu, and just five days ago, I, willingly, hiked to the bottom of a deep gorge, climbed over river boulders, and slid down a waterfall on my butt. Talk about outside your comfort zone!






















Being forced to play the cards we are dealt – financial crisis, medical emergency, personal disaster – sometimes allows us to free ourselves of what we thought were comfort zones. Listening to that still, small voice telling you “no, you don’t want to do that” may or may not always be beneficial. I suppose the true test of mettle is understanding when to know difference.