During my Journalism class junior year, Mr Wall once spoke to us about comfort. He told us that "the worst lesson we are taught is that someone will always take care of us."
I understand the logic behind that. As individuals, it's imperative that we learn to take care of ourselves because we really can't be surrounded by help at all hours of the day. Or at least, it's not expected of us. Independent people are looked up to, regarded as people that are going to go somewhere in life.
But today, Mr Potter shared a thought with us: "I stand out in the hall, and when people say hi to each other, they hug. Not so long ago...people didn't do that. They didn't hug. It sometimes seems like we constantly need to be comforted."
That kind of got to me - not in a bad way, but in the way that makes me think. (Why does it always seem to be that I get writing ideas from the tiniest things my teachers say?)
I thought that Mr Potter had a good point, there. We are no longer a society in which we need to be so proper and polite that we have to have chaperones or never touch one another. But we really have become a society that is dependent on other people in our social lives.
It seems like we have to constantly be reassured of things. We have a "Like" option to reassure us that things we say are clever; we have Facebook to (supposedly) remind us that we have an identity and a constant source of communication.
Regarding relationships in high school today, a huge part of it is seemingly made up entirely of comfort. Young couples who believe they are head-over-heels in love because they found someone that they believe is "the one" are ever-hungry for the reassurance that they are "good enough" for the other person. They need to hear that they are "beautiful" and that they complete their partner.
How can you complete someone who isn't even whole?
Are we ever whole, no matter if we find love or not?
My rationale is that we never are - why would you want to live another day of your life knowing that you don't need to learn another lesson or grow through another experience?
Why would you want to wake up the next morning knowing that you have completed all that you need to complete, and that you don't need to do any more...and you still have to live?
I mean...what would you do? Wouldn't you think, "I can die right now"?
Isn't that part of the purpose of death, in the first place?
We can't live life predictably, always comforted.
We can't be in a relationship in which we constantly trade only happy words and moments.
We can't stay down after we fall because we are afraid of going back out there.
We have to wake up and not know how the day is going to be.
We have to let love be something organically grown, with a few knots as well as the lovely flower that never dies because it's constantly being renewed.
We have to let new things in because you never know if you'll end up with something you needed all along.
Not to say that comfort is totally vile. It's only human to be there for one another in times of need. When someone we love is going through a hard time, our first reaction is to want to be there by their side. We are not made to be solitary creatures - we are made to have contact.
We are all part of each other. When we wake up as 40-somethings, we remember someone we met back when we were 17 and we realize what they gave to our lives. Maybe they gave you only one good memory, but they were such a person that you remember them years later. You won't see them as you did when you were 17 (hopefully), but you'll remember how you saw them.
That's kind of a neat thing about people and growing up in life. Feelings change, but memories don't.
Maybe not everyone regards things like this. And that's okay. It kind of saddens me, though. There are very few of us left that appreciate the smell of a bookshelf, jumping barefoot in mud puddles, and for once not constantly worrying that tomorrow will not go our way. We are an endangered species, the outcasts, those that get a lot of raised eyebrows.
But where will the future be without a thirst for living life beyond total happiness, the comfort of not having to show your face to anybody because the "online you" is so much cooler?
The future will be desolate. The future will be lonely.
We can't be comfortable forever. We have to get dirty. We have to get out of our zone. We have to - no way! - go through pain.
On the same token, we have to realize that not everyone in the world is out to get us. People actually have the capacity to be faithful and love you for the person you are becoming in life. We have to learn how to reach a hand out to someone that needs it, and accept the hands that are outstretched to us. Humility is such a powerful thing...for something considered to most as "meek."
It's a balance. And a lesson that is constantly being taught and re-taught.
Oh, life. What a fantastic monster you are.
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