What Really Lies Beyond the Comfort Zone
They always nudge her to step beyond the confines of her comfort zone. And so she does.
It’s not like she has a say in the matter. It’s not like she can hastily mumble a no, especially not with the way they urge her on, not with the way their eyes twinkle whenever they talk about this enigmatic, magical place. Not to mention the sense of wonder dripping in their voices. These alone are enough to goad her in. Plus, she would be an absolute fool to refuse, to throw away this chance to be invited into their inner circle.
Stepping outside your comfort zones.
How tantalizing it sounds, how utterly heroic.
Only it’s not really like that in real life.
She grabs the opportunity to lead her colleagues. Never mind that she’s not a leader — that she, in fact, never has been. Never mind that she has never bothered to converse with them — let alone approach them — before her new situation strides into the limelight.
The truth is, there are infinite reasons to decline. For one, she abhors speaking in front of a huge crowd, the very idea sending her into a standstill. And then, in meetings, she has always preferred to keep her lips sewn tightly shut, choosing to observe the others and to jot down her opinions and questions on her bedraggled notebook instead—
She decides to fling all of her qualms aside. After all, doesn’t the cliche say that there’s a first time for everything?
She summons a deep breath, dismisses her worries, and paces towards this foreign, blinding world.
But there’s none of that stark whiteness on the other side. On the contrary, there’s only an abysmal darkness that leisurely devours her, a blackness so impenetrable that it’s impossible to grope her way out no matter how much — no matter how desperately — she fumbles about.
Whenever there are meetings with clients and people from the other departments, of course she’s expected to take over. She doesn’t have the slightest inkling of what she’s saying most of the time, but then it never seems to matter, because her ungainly words always fall on deaf ears anyway. After all, why will they listen to this puny, unappealing girl who’s perpetually on the verge of tears? This helpless excuse for a manager who stammers every few seconds, who can never say the right thing?
She doesn’t have the guts to be assertive enough, to reprimand her teammates (the majority of which have been around longer in the company than her) whenever they’re doing something that breaches their office policies. Instead, she cowers in a corner, desperately hoping that the upper management won’t ever find out about her sheer inefficiency to handle the situation.
At this point, despite being reduced to tears, despite her mounting self-hatred, despite being nothing but a bundle of anxiety, her ultimate dread actually still hasn’t happened.
But it’s about to.
Soon.
When she’s asked to speak in front of everyone, she instantly knows that there’s no way out of it.
Every minute of her waking life is spent on a frightful anticipation of what’s about to come. She inwardly wishes for most of her teammates to be absent during that accursed day, especially the rowdy ones. The last thing she needs is them inciting ruckus that she won’t be able to stop. The last thing she needs is a blatant display of their refusal to acknowledge her authority — with them choosing to chatter among themselves instead, drowning the office in hissing voices that slowly creeps towards her, constricts her, making it impossible to breathe.
But as another trite saying goes, expect the unexpected.
The moment the nightmare starts, there isn’t even the merest hint of a sound hovering in the air.
There’s only a forbidding silence as they all inspect her with their deadened, hostile eyes.
It doesn’t take a genius to know that none of them is listening to a word that she’s saying.
The calm that she has been carefully cultivating finally shatters, and she bursts into tears without warning.
Go outside your comfort zone, they say.
And so she does —
Only it turns out that there’s no warmth and kindness on the other side, and that, in the end, her sole companion is the thousands of miserable voices screaming in her head, pleading her to escape, to go back to how things used to be.
But there’s no way out, and now she’s stuck in this brutal, unforgiving world that constantly punishes her for making the wrong decision.
Check out my previous posts for The Junction:
