these walls are funny

I was driving home from work the other day and I realized that as I flipped from station to station I was feeding my already bad/anxious mood like adding gas to a flame. I noticed that I stopped on every sad song I could find, and let the lyrics wash over me, triggering an onslaught of negative emotions that became more and more difficult to shake. Hours later as the music continued to play in my head I struggled to comprehend why I had done this to myself, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized that I was feeding the negative mood bc even as painful as it was/is, it is familiar. And familiar, even if it is painful, is comfortable. I think we can all be guilty of things like this (maybe not to the extreme that I am) but it must have some benefit to us/me or we would not do it - perhaps it is the benefit of familiarity and the safe feeling that it produces (as odd as that sounds)-as a friend pointed out to me, we know what we are getting when we dwell on it; we are familiar with it - we are not when we take an 'unknown path of action' . We take an odd comfort of the known-known, even if it is sadness, anxiety or stress; we’d rather dance with the devil we know than the one we don’t. It’s that fear of unknown-unknowns that seem to challenge us most.

It reminded of the line Red says to Andy in The Shawshank Redemption “These walls are kind of funny. First you hate em, then you get used to em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.”. Metaphorically speaking we all build up the walls Red is referring to. Perhaps the single biggest challenge we all face in life is breaking down those walls, and choosing to face the unknown. So here’s to breaking down walls, to being uncomfortable and escaping that 6 inch prison b/w our ears. I made a promise to myself that I am going to work harder, I am going to push harder, I am going to try to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and continue to surround myself with good people bc only good things can come from that and I am fortunate to have them. I ask that you challenge me, and I promise in return to challenge you both physically and mentally.