Comfort Zone

Comfort Zone, 11 x 14, acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

Listen to me read the poem about this painting,

or read on your own the text below.

Within us all are the unexplored territories

beyond our comfort zone.

In that darkness lies 

memories

and dreams

and possibilities

and beliefs about this crazy thing that we call reality

And in that darkness

it is hard to breathe.

So we wake up, day after day, and tout the beauty of the light. 

Happiness is our pursuit! we write on book covers and in journals and in our news stories and onto the folds of our brains 

and happiness, we believe, is what happens when we learn to stay in the light.

Death, murder, suicide, affairs, sexual cravings, shame, depression, feeling as though we are Not Enough, a messy home, a messy body, a messy life, ... What Is, What might be

if we ventured into the darkness, the space beyond this bright light that we fly to again and again even though we've learned it doesn't bring that happiness that we remain addicted to pursuing.

Too much. At least for today.

So we go to work, drink our coffee, curse the weather, enjoy our t.v. shows. Day in, day out. And eventually, the days do run out.

Beyond it all is the space that we don't look into. The spaces we don't discuss. 

How sadly funny it is that we keep ourselves confined in this narrow little alley together, lemurs marching to the beat of What We Know Must Be True,

bumping up against one another, fearing that we don't have enough because it is true: In this tiny little rainbow and unicorn path with our blinders on there isn't enough.

It is as if each of us, you, me, we squeeze ourselves together in this tight little comfort ball beneath our warm sheets and complain when we don't have enough air to breathe. The air is there. We simply need to open up and breathe it.

We must breathe into that space where it feels, at first, uncomfortable to breathe.  

We must know that we don't know.

We must remember that answers aren't what keep us alive, but rather it is in the asking of the questions that we find life. A life marched to answers alone goes from birth to school to job to old age to death and back again in an endless cycle. A life open to the questions? Come. Find out with me. 

Every person must take this path on her own. For too long, we've blamed others, judged others, condemned others while we sit smugly in our own light. It's time to venture on, friend.

Look into the night sky and breathe. Look into your memories and breathe. Stand naked before a mirror and breathe. Look into your own humanity and breathe.

Look into the eyes of another and breathe.

For too long, you've been confined by your fears of this darkness. Breathe.

It is time.