Comforting Zone

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."

I have that quote taped up on my fridge in San Diego. I thought it was clever. A self-dare. A mantra.
But what does that mean, "your comfort zone?"
I always thought it meant to do things you are scared of doing because that is exactly what you should be doing- like what the actors always tell John Lipton in the Actor's Studio interviews:  "I took the role cause it scared the shit out of me!"

For me it is going to a party or meeting where I don't know anyone, approaching a group, and saying 'hey whats up' in my least terrified voice but being scared of everyone turning their backs in unison and screaming 'loser!' (OK, my fear isn't that bad. OK, only sometimes.)
It is packing up my surfboard and heading to the beach to relearn an old passion (melting sunset, feet dangling in the water, peace tingling in my heart) but being scared of getting tumbled (waves below, sand overhead, surfboard in face).
It is asking that interesting stranger if they would like to get coffee but being scared they will say no and hurt my ego or say yes and then I actually have to engage with someone with whom I don't know how things will turn out. (Do we ever? Relationships are scary things but I want them. Hell, I want a lot of em: platonic, romantic, occasionally somewhere in-between. Connection is connection and I've been blessed with a lot of that beautiful stuff in my life.)
It is sitting down to write but being scared to write badly or scared of the emotions that need to be released in order to write as well as I want, need, can.

But I'm also scared of falling off cliffs and I don't think that that is what I should be doing, right?
And what if, say, you do something that contains a fairly well known quantity of fear and anxiety, like, oh, using a piece of plastic and metal to hurl you into the ocean at a pace slower than your grandmother would drive in a school zone but fast enough that hitting something is a very, very bad deal? Being thrown around the frothy liquid surface by wind and waves that don't care that you have a delicate stomach and/or have lentil sprouts growing on the galley counter? Jettisoning yourself from a cozy little community you've built with handshakes, hugs, and occasional (reusable) shopping bags of dandelion greens?
Is that me leaving my comfort zone or simply returning to an anxiety that I know and crave? We sailors are funny like that: we return to that anxiety with open arms. We say our dramatic goodbyes so that the future homecomings are that much more sweet. We go into the unknown because our land life has either become too pleasantly comfortable or there is palpable discomfort in the mundane routine.

I am excited about the excitement of being at sea even though it is one of the most basic and strangely calming journeys to take. Sure, storms can rip through, winds change, waves build and flatten, systems may go awry. But it is you and the sea. You are not contending with thousands of other drivers on a highway. You do not have to wonder if your dinner reservation will be kept when you are 15 minutes late. You do not have to rush home to feed the dog or juggle three jobs, two cats, and a growing To-Do list. You are surrounded by the same ever mutating ocean day in and day out.
And it is literally life or death.
Basic.

Of course you are watching, waiting, thinking, anticipating, doing, eating, sleeping while doing this one thing: sailing. There is not so much a comfort zone out there as much as you are suddenly in a comforted zone when you are a few days out and the wind shifts and you're not puking over the side or into a sink anymore. Or even if you are still pounding into the waves and saltwater is your new hairspray, there is still a sense of normalcy to it all. It is no longer out of your comfort zone. It is just Who and Where you are.
It is all you have ever known and all you will ever see.
It is the Now in its rawest form.

Yet at some point, I gotta get off the boat. Then it is land that becomes the tangible edge of my comfort zone and I am anxious to step foot onto a still mass, to listen through accents, to be in a country in which I've never been, to leave the ship that has cradled me through 1100 nautical miles of deep blue.

So is the comfort zone thing about always moving forward, taking steps, taking action? In the simplest way it is getting out of bed in the morning. I think on the opposite end of the spectrum at this point in my life would be having a child. (Talk about changing your life, leaving your comfort zone while creating a comfort (until they are 13 at least) all in one tiny magenta-tinged package. That is an action beyond the scope of my comprehension at this point as well as one that that requires many steps in between (see paragraph two: Relationships).)

Somewhere in the middle is sailing.

So here I am, leaving my comfort zone to be comforted by the wind and waves and memories of all those people on land I miss and love. And I am anxious. And I am excited. Wherever that edge may fall, whether it is the sharp crest of a wave, the golden ribbon of distant shoreline, or the fork tined border of a newly planted garden bed, stepping over that threshold is exactly where I need to be in this very moment.