Last week we were out for a meal with some friends who we see irregularly on account of the fact that they often aren’t in the country. This week they were, and on this night out, he said to me, you’re out of your comfort zone, aren’t you? He would know all about being out of his comfort zone (located as in diagram above). We left one restaurant recently because there were children in it. They don’t have any, children that is. Doesn’t like dogs either. But I digress.
He said this having watched me dither over my choice of beer at one of these real-ale type places with beers with silly names none of which I had experience of. And then later in the Goan restaurant when faced with dishes I didn’t know either. Quick as a flash, and without any thought, I replied, yes, and my comfort zone is getting smaller as I get older. I said it and then, as is often the case with things I say, I thought, blimey, is that really true? Has the truth emerged in an unguarded moment or was it simply a facile response?
A little later in the evening, when Mrs Summerhouse and I were lying in bed I considered the proposition – that I take less risks and enjoy the comfort of the tried and tested, the known knowns, more than I used to. Was it true? Has remaining in my comfort zone become more important to me now as a retired person? Have I become a bit of a scaredy cat?
There’s no doubt that my risk-taking still happens but it’s mostly confined to the musical aspects of my retirement. I’ve written about these challenges often enough so I won’t repeat them in this retirement blog. Suffice it to say I feel, on the whole, and because of the music, that I’ve achieved a fair balance (one of my key retirement values) between challenge and comfort.
Occasionally the balance does become unbalanced like when Mrs Summerhouse, on one of our dog walks, told me to, go over there (to the children’s playground) and stop those 8, all dressed in black, hooded youths from damaging the swings. Now that was risky.
As was, in a quite different way, paying £450 to attend a wine-tasting of English wines and then bringing along our own wine for people to compare to the more established commercial wineries. Solaris a victor and Rondo, not. Quite a stressful evening I’ve written about elsewhere in these retirement blogs.
At a more mundane, slightly less dangerous, level there’s my recent dealings with Amazon. Quite unpredictable it has been. A parcel of books left on the step in the rain to go soggy, orders cancelled by them which I re-ordered and they send me the whole lot, including the ones they had cancelled. Orders that I had cancelled because they charged me for postage when that should not have been the case, but then they send them anyway and items that don’t come on the date they have stated – they come early so we haven’t arranged to be in. Yep, all in all ordering from Amazon seems to be quite a high risk these days.
So, even when one tries to remain in one’s comfort zone, it’s not always possible. But then I thought, given a retired person should find it easier to be in one’s designated comfort zone, on account of not having work or a career to deal with, what can that mean? Nobody asking / demanding you do things you’re not at all comfortable with, staying in a comfort zone should be easier. Providing one’s partner isn’t sending you off to bring our hooded ‘friends’ back on the straight and narrow of a life of community responsibility, life should be comfortable.
I suppose it helps if a person is relatively well off when retired because having a bit of dosh means you can organise a higher level of comfort. You might call it the best comfort zone money can buy. You can, in effect, take the comfort zone with you. Travel first-class, buy warm clothes, eat better food, drink nicer wine, that kind of thing. Comforts you probably take for granted most of the time, at least until they’re taken away. Like on a night out with our friends.
I suppose the real question here is, why should I even worry about being too often in my comfort zone? As a retired person, why wouldn’t I want to spend as much time as possible in such a zone? You know the ‘kick back and relax’ theory of retirement. The ‘you’ve worked hard all your life, now chill out’ approach to one’s retirement. The ‘it’s true, it’s nasty old world out there, but we can keep it at bay’ strategy. Why worry about comfort zones at all?
I think I have the answer to this question. It’s the correlation with senility isn’t it? That’s why we’re uncomfortable with too much comfort. It’s the pipe and slippers are nice, it’s our food is down the front of our cardigan but never mind, and it’s not caring if you’ve gone out with your fly open (well maybe not that).
It’s the belief that risk-taking or setting challenges equates with keeping mentally (and maybe even physically) healthy. Something to do with maintaining our self-esteem, providing, by confronting 8 hooded louts, one doesn’t get the shit kicked out of one. Which we might confidently say is not self-esteem enhancing.
So there we are that’s the conundrum we face as retired people when we consider the merit and otherwise of this mythical beast, our comfort zone. You will just have to make your own decisions about where your comfort zone about comfort zones, lies. You could go for the fuck it, we’re only going to do this once, theory, so let’s just enjoy.
Or you could try on the WASP approach to retirement. Which broadly would have been there’s no such thing as retirement (and hence this thing called a comfort zone), you simply keep working hard until you die. Happy thought.