live on the edge of all you can be

​I have a running buddy who likes to say we all need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. The idea is in our discomfort we are most likely to find our best chance of being all that we can be.

The hard part about that is from the very earliest moments of our lives, our brains are wiring us to pursue safety and comfort. Our brains are designed to become fully automated machines that move us to safe and comfortable places without us ever having to think about it.

The science in us would love nothing more than to make us all robots.

I think of our brains as an unvisited forest. If we navigate that forest for the first time, we'll leave an imprint. The beginnings of a trail. If we safely navigate the forest on that trail, our brain compels us to use it again. And again. Until that virgin trip through the forest becomes a fully functioning dirt trail.

Our brain wants to wire in us a network of safe trails. We spend most of our days responding to the science of our lives - following those wires - those habits - that have automated us to move toward safety and comfort.

There is something in us, though - in every one of us - that makes us bigger than our science. There is a human nature longing that leaves us always wondering - is it possible that there's another trail in this forest? Is there a path that might be riskier but ultimately more beautiful? A path that makes me whole?

When these longings stir in us, our brain tries to quiet them. Our brain wants us to remain comfortable being comfortable. Don't go there, our brain says.

The brain, by design, is actually quite lazy. It's developed this nice trail for you to walk in life. It has no desire to start plotting and blazing another one just to accommodate your human longings.

Your brain wants you to believe the trail you can see in the forest is the only trail in the forest.

Your brain wants you to believe life is to be played safe no matter how beautiful you imagine it to be on the other side of risk.

Your brain wants you to believe who you are now is truly all that you can be.

Some science in our brains is a good thing. I'm thankful when I'm driving and an oncoming car swerves into my path that my lazy brain has been wired to have me automatically re-direct my car toward safety.

So, yes, some trails are really good trails.

Funny thing is, though, running trails has taught me there ARE other trails in life. Unseen and unimagined trails. My brain tried to tell me they were too long or too high or too rocky or just too dangerous. Don't go there, my brain said.

But I went there. I let the luring of my human nature pull me away from the science that begged me not to go. Oh, did I discover how magical life can be. That we are humanly capable of far more than our science wants us to believe. I discovered the majesty found in being human is what makes becoming robots, no matter how safe and protected and comfortable those robots might be, a really tragic consequence of our science.

It makes becoming comfortable being comfortable, in many ways, a sacrifice of a beautiful human life.