HOW WE BECOME WHO WE BECOME: Part IV

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Throughout our school years, no matter how long they last, we are acquiring information and building our comfort zones.  At some point, we begin to realize that the things that we see and hear are either consistent with what we have come to believe, or inconsistent to some degree.  It is at this point when we begin to alter the zone that exists to be more consistent with our current values and beliefs.  We may choose to reinforce the lessons taught by our parents and family and friends, or we may choose to modify for any number of reasons.  Those reasons for change could be guided by new friends, the love of our life, the politics we choose to follow, the realization that our family is not a good model for how we want to live our life, etc.  The point here is that our comfort zones are evolutionary, constantly changing to some degree, based on what we encounter in the world we live in.

It is here where the bad elements that have been previously installed may come into play.  If our comfort zones include places where bad influences are alright in small doses, we may grow into accepting those influences in increasing doses until they begin to negatively impact our lives.  This becomes more possible when we move away from the limits imposed by our parents.  Drugs and alcohol are the two that are most obvious, but the evils of overeating, excessive sex, narcissism, gambling, and so on can be just as distracting and destructive to a developing life.  The endorphins that are released when we are feeling pleasure are powerful substances, driving us in directions that may not be in our best interests.  Our comfort zones do not make wholesale changes overnight, and the changes are in fact so subtle that we often do not even see them happening.  We may even have the same values and deeply rooted beliefs, but we fool ourselves into believing that our current behavior is consistent with who we really are.

And some of us may reach the stage when we see that we are a lot like the people who raised us.  Even though they taught us from their experience, the lure of pleasure was so strong that they were not able to live without the temptations of life on Earth.  And how do we feel when we realize that we are like our parents?  When we hear ourselves say the exact same things that we hated hearing as a kid and swore that we would never say ourselves?  For some, I suppose that it could be reinforcing and comforting.  For others, it could be enough to scare us into a major shift in our comfort zones.  And many of us never see it coming, and continue down the same paths.

But what happens when our comfort zones no longer work for us?  When the things we hold dear to us begin to slip away, when the things we allow ourselves to be seduced into begin intrude upon who we want to be, what we want to have, where we want to go?  What happens when we are kicked from our comfort zones, with no safety net to catch us?  What do we do to save ourselves?  Physically?  Emotionally?  Spiritually?  Mentally?  We will begin to explore one man’s journey in our next installment.

Until Next Time,

Julius