Madeline Garber shares her thoughts about leaving her comfort zone during college.
Coming to Goshen for me was like an extension of my house, despite the 10 hour drive. I had no difficulty fitting in, finding my place. I thought I was owning the whole college thing; no homesickness, no doubt, no problems, so much comfort. Then I met someone and I went to Spain with him. We started dating. I came back and worked so hard to maintain everything as it was before. I tried to play the part, be the archetype of a (Mennonite) college student, no problems and no worries. But it wasn’t working. My ideas and assumptions about the world and about my own life were being challenged and by not acknowledging those challenges, I was hurting myself.
Why is it so hard for us to allow our ideas to be challenged? Why are our friend groups made up of people that agree with us about most things? It may be fun to be with someone different for a day, but when they get uncomfortably close to causing us to ask questions, we back away again, remaining friendly but from a distance. Honestly, the only thing that kept me from retreating back into myself during this process, into my world where everything made sense to me, was the fact that I fell in love. Nothing else would have been a strong enough force to change my worldview, my self-concept, and even parts of my identity, or at least what I had clung to as my identity.
Throughout this process, many things became clear to me. We like acting in ways that make us feel validated, whether or not those actions are actually authentic to ourselves. When we’re surrounded by people who automatically agree with what we say and do, no one asks us why we do certain things. But when someone does ask why, whether or not they agree doesn’t matter, we lash back, defending our self-concept. I think we would all be surprised at how many of our beliefs we can’t fully articulate when faced with a valid challenge. And I think this lack of definition is what forces us into the same friend groups over and over, no matter where we go.
The funny part is that before all of this I thought I was open-minded, like really open-minded. It didn’t occur to me that my life did not reflect that. What kind of people did I have conversations with on a daily basis? If I would have answered honestly, it was only people whose realities looked like mine. But if anyone would have pointed that out to me then, I would have argued back instead of reevaluating my thoughts, patterns, actions, etc.
So what did my comfort zone look like? For me, it was always being productive, always affirmed and liked, avoiding all conflict, aiming for a career that looked good, making only rational decisions, basically only acting in ways that would look good to the outside world. All of these things were challenged with my new relationship and the process of getting to know someone with a different worldview.
The last one in that list, only acting in ways that look good to everyone else, is really the kicker, because when I started looking at myself and at my values, I realized that while I was busy trying to be perfect, I never gave myself the chance to practice making my own decisions. All my decisions were easy to make because they fit neatly into an image that both felt good and looked good for the world. I had never actually wanted or tried to do anything that didn’t reflect well on my “perfect Mennonite” status.
So when I started questioning just a few things in my life, it felt like it all unravelled and I became aware of how shallow my decision-making ability was. While learning how to make my decisions was excruciatingly painful in some ways, it was also one of the most life-giving processes I’ve experienced. I never could have guessed how important of a step that was for my life.
Obviously everyone’s comfort zone looks different, and I hope for your sake that none of you are as non-confrontational or people-pleasing as I was. But whatever your comfort zone is, I bet it’s pretty damn hard to leave, even if you don’t know that yet. My suggestion to you? Figure out what defines your comfort zone and intentionally do something that defies it, you never know what you might find.
MADELINE ROSE GARBER
*If anyone is interested in talking to me about some of the things I’ve written, I would love to talk to you and you can reach me at my Goshen email madelinerg@goshen.edu or find me on Goshen’s campus most days.