We are getting used to referring to people’s “Comfort Zone” as something as “natural as it is not advisable”. And this is a dangerous thing. The “Comfort Zone” is one of the most important ills that can happen to the human being: it weakens him, deprives him of perspective, and nullifies his natural potential to be an agent of change and a purposeful builder of his reality. The person who develops his life within the narrow limits of his “Comfort Zone” adopts a parasitic attitude that affects the development and well-being of others.
It is not part of the nature of the human being to be comfortable and take refuge in the suffocating borders of security and the predictable, quite the opposite! The nature of the human being is that of a being of Conquest, of challenge, of exploring the unknown and reaching knowledge, of identifying and overcoming his fears, of establishing sovereignty wherever he goes.
We tend to think that the world we live in is the product of the Great People who had dreams and made them come true, incomparable souls who invented what they couldn’t discover, who made vision and reality synonymous. However, the deep truth is that this world has been built by people who have simply been faithful to their nature, because the human being is great by essence, and dwells on this planet to establish dominion.
There are Great Human Beings, of course, but they exist as a product of everyone else making themselves small. And this reality hides a little trivial drama. Because the responsibility for the future of the species is left behind, one that is not defined in the fictitious and ethereal heat of “security”. The Comfort Zone generates a reality where few Do and many wait in the shelter of comfort. Societies of few creators and multiple viewers, or “makers and takers” as Objectivists and followers of the powerful thought of Ayn Rand tend to call them.
It is not enough to be “constructive critics” with those who guide their lives in the reluctance to take risks, undertake and challenge limits and impossibilities, it is necessary to demand that they assume the role that Nature has assigned them, demand that they take responsibility with their lives in a manner consistent with the general interest.
The Comfort Zone cannot exist as an existential premise, life is not easy and demands that everyone invest their best attributes in it. The Comfort Zone is a psychological construction that is forming weak, lacking human beings, incapable of assuming responsibility for their destiny, and specialists in demanding from others. There are many more who ask than those who give, more numerous who believe they are full of rights, and few who understand that they are obliged to Be, as an obligation towards others.
People who take refuge in their Comfort Zone sincerely think that they do not harm anyone, but they commit that type of offense with their peers that are inscribed in the Omission because they do not fail by the Commission since Action is exactly what is demanded of them and what they do not give. It is much better to settle accounts with people who are continually wrong in the desire to Do than with those who omit action precisely for fear of being wrong.
As time goes by and the favors of progress bless everyone, the group of people who develop their lives strictly in their Comfort Zone is more numerous. The world has never seen so many people who are risk-averse and afraid to step out of the space where they live, oblivious to the natural dynamics of life. Hundreds of millions of people essentially hoping from their “warm haven” that things don’t change, or do so solely for their benefit. Hundreds of millions do little and demand a lot.
Because little do those who build an altar from their Comfort Zone, no matter how much they consider themselves honest and hardworking people. In this case, a deeper moral analysis of what should be considered honesty and work would have to be done. In the “major context” or what the Americans call the “bigger picture”, a person could not necessarily be considered honest if their contribution to the social interest is completely passive and neutral. Nor should it be assumed that your work is productive if it essentially falls short of the limits of your potential.
Today there is a distorted approach to what constitutes work ethics since it is associated too much with intensity, effort, and time. The more someone “works” and the more time they invest in it, the better, at least according to the perspective of those who measure work with parameters very similar to the “horsepower” that defines the power of machines. When someone dares to say that “more work” does not necessarily mean more productivity or better profit, the moral qualifications of work apologists like the Egyptians who built the pyramids or the ants who work all day, from the moment they are born to the moment they die.
They angrily raise their voices when unemployment rates are mentioned or when there are indications that some new technology will reduce the “labor force”. They do not realize that this is like fighting against windmills, because the transformation of labor demands is a natural dynamic of economic development. Nor do they realize that it is part of the evolution of the species to have machines that efficiently replace tasks that human beings carry out with great effort or sacrifice.
It is common for people who live in a Comfort Zone to angrily criticize these things while they gladly manipulate their smartphones or enjoy the central heating in their homes. They fail to understand that their own “comforts” are the product of that economic dynamic that causes unemployment and transformations in the production chain. They do not understand that the progress they demand from the “peace” of their environments has a cost that someone must pay. They prefer to assume that “inconveniences” and problems are always the product of “bad governments”, of unjust systems of economic and social ordering, or essentially of “someone else”, of “someone else”.
How little do they understand that bad government, corruption, unemployment, and poverty are also a consequence of their passivity, of that attitude of watching life go by behind the fragility of a window that provides ethereal security? How little do they understand that it is very difficult to sustain a “comfortable” life system when there are few who propose, risk, explore and conquer, while there are many who wait and claim?
With everything expressed, it is not affirmed that the people who live in their Comfort Zone are a group of idlers or lazy people. The underlying theme is related to the concept of Contribution. The human being is endowed with a much greater potential than the one that is exploited from the Comfort Zone, and it is a moral imperative that this potential be reached. Just as it could not be understood that a Tiger lives inside a house like a domestic cat, it cannot be understood or accepted that the human being develops his life without perfecting the potential that he naturally has. For the same reason, it cannot be accepted that this “domestic tiger” limits himself to waiting for his fellow animals to carry out their function outside while he responsibly “takes care” of the house.
It is possible that many people are not aware that they live in a Comfort Zone or read these lines like someone who receives references from a neighbor, but determining the matter is quite simple: everyone who for different reasons has stopped living in a Comfort Zone lives in a Comfort Zone. fight for what you dreamed of or longed for at some point in your life. As simple as that! Since he who struggles to achieve what he yearns for exploits his potential, and in this way is registered among those who Create and not only among those who demand.
Another thing is that dreams are finally achieved or visions are fulfilled! That is unimportant in the final equation. The road and its traffic are what qualify the campaign, not necessarily the destination station. It is essential to understand that Life is a Qualitative matter, a matter of Quality and never quantity. From the moment that the human being has preserved a few years of life, where does the qualification of things come from the quantitative perspective?
The person who does not live in a Comfort Zone knows much more about defeat, loss, discouragement, and frustration, of course! but is willing to pay the cost with the same naturalness and joy as the one who fervently wanted to buy something and get it at a good price. This person knows that the best in life is what costs the most, and for this reason, he does not see the burdensomeness of things as he appreciates their value. These people are convinced that losses must be assumed as an offering that rewards actions and ideas, the cost of love for dreams, consistency with healthy ambition, and solidarity with effort.
It is a mistake to assume that the Comfort Zone is a curiosity that affects the attitude of certain people or an opportunity for those who do not share it. It is something much bigger, much more serious, and much more dangerous. It is something that is undermining the essence of human capacity, something that is weakening the species and its possibilities in the future.
Let’s go back for a second to the initial question posed in this reflection: If the logic of the Comfort Zone had coexisted with human beings as it does today, would they have managed to get out of the caves? Would the benefits we enjoy today exist?
And for those who still dare to question progress and have the audacity to affirm that environmental pollution, hunger, disease, crime, etc., are also due to it, it would be good to invite them to imagine if it had been better. remain in the comfort of those caverns from the beginning of our history.
There is no more representative element of the Comfort Zone than those gigantic systems that support the Welfare States in many countries of the world, or those outdated political projects that offer solidarity after the dark attempt to “equalize” poverty, lack, or need. Those proclamations of social equality only try to use the hope of the naive person or the mischief of those who expect others to solve their problems. As long as all these attempts are based on the weakness of the human being or on his eventual inability to take control of his destiny, they will only achieve what an aspirin in a severe illness.
Nor is it about sustaining “Nietzchan’s premises” calling for Superman or the “law of the jungle”, in case someone already interprets that the criticism of the Comfort Zone lacks empathy or comes from “opulent” people who “little know ” of the necessities in life. This is a simple and humble call to the potential that every human being has in their nature. A conviction about the immense possibilities and capabilities that everyone has. It is a reaffirmation of Believing in everything that can be done and not in limitations.
Possibly the most immoral statement that has ever been heard (perhaps it should be said amoral), is the one that expresses that the order in which things have “finally is not so bad”, because thinking about the matter thoroughly “Who would row the boat? if everyone was a captain, or who would put on the muscle if everyone was a brain, or who would carry the stones if everyone was dreaming of reaching their potential in life? Nothing is poorer and more demeaning than to think like that! Since if it were a matter of muscle or industry, fate would have behaved very meanly with the human being, since it has not endowed him with any advantage in this about other creatures of Nature, however, has given him, like no one else, the ability to dream and a brain that can allow him to conquer other worlds.
Do not forget: the Comfort Zone is populated by Tigers who decide to adopt the life of a Domestic Cat, while their natural environment, vast, rich, full of plenitude and freedom, is outside. There is not only a home there, there is a kingdom to rule.
