growing

Growth is found at the edge of your comfort zone. I’m not sure who is quoted to have said that, but I realised this, this weekend.

A lot of us like to live within our comfort zones, a lot of us think we do. We set up plans and see them through no matter what obstacles we have to overcome. We get into comfortable routines, we draw up a perfect image of our perfect lives and do whatever we can to live up to it, but once in a while something comes up that throws a hitch into our perfectly planned lives and once in a while we can’t fix it, or simply gloss over it and go back to where we’d been. Once in a while, every so often we find ourselves at the point where something has got to give and somewhere between the state of surrender and the realisation of it, we grow.

And life changes in such a way that we know we can never go back, we can pretend to, go back to the routine, but something is different. Something has changed, we have changed. We have grown.

This weekend I realised that I cannot live inside my comfort zone. I realised that I have never truly lived inside my comfort zones, no matter what I thought. I was constantly at the edge, I have always been at the edge, but this has not always been my awareness. Which is why I created this illusion of a comfort zone, a place where nothing changes, where things were safe and known. But this zone does not exist, and I realise that what lies beyond it is more blissful than any state of comfort and security I have known. There is freedom, there is life, there is joy.

And this morning I came across a quote that ties this up neatly for me

The basis of life is Freedom

The objective of life is Joy

The result of life is Growth

- Abraham, 1989

At the edge of my comfort zone I have begun to grow,

and I find myself and my image of self expanding to encompass

all I have been, and all I ever will be.

All that I am