tHE steel door AND tHE undiscovered COUNTRY©
He
was a civil war general, and he was excellent at maintaining order among his
troops. Once a soldier was brought
in to his office for a minor disciplinary problem… well I shouldn’t say
minor, he killed a man… on his own side.
“I’ll give you two choices,” the general said.
“Death… by a firing squad, or simply walk through the steel door in
the back of my office.” The
soldier looked at the general and pondered, knowing that he was probably going
to die, and that the general would never offer him something better than what he
knew he was getting. So he planted
his feet, gritted his teeth, and said, “I choose death”; and, as the man
requested, he was taken outside and executed, all the while the general looked
at the ground, shook his head, and said, what a fool, if only he had chosen the
steel door. One of his officers
inquired as to what was behind the steel door.
“Freedom,” he said, “And few, few have been brave enough to take
it.”
A fool indeed. But are we
any braver? For every day we come
to the choice between our present circumstances, whatever they may be, and that
steel door, and yet we fail to choose that door even in the most minute parts of
our lives. And what (exactly) is
that steel door? Quite simply, the
unknown, the unusual, the different, or as Shakespeare put it, not so simply,
“The Undiscovered Country, from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the
will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than to journey to those we
know not of. Thus conscience, does
make cowards of us all.”
The Undiscovered Country. We
rarely travel there yet because we don’t - we deny ourselves such opportunity
and sometimes cause quite horrible results, like assassinations during the Civil
War, or the murder of eleven million people during the Holocaust.
Who would dare stand up to the Nazi’s?
Hardly anyone returned from that Undiscovered Country.
They were all killed. But
does this concept apply only to death and tragedy?
I only wish. What about that
gorgeous guy or girl you wish you had had the guts to go up to and ask for a
name and phone number, or what about that time you really needed to ask a
question in class, but you thought you’d sound stupid asking it so you
didn’t. That steel door to the Undiscovered Country is open to us
every day. Yet most of the time we
stay where we are. See, instead
venturing into the Undiscovered Country, we like to stay in what I call the
Comfort Zone. It’s not fabulous. It’s pretty uninteresting, a little depressing, and
incredibly boring. But we know
we’ll be comfortable there. Why
do we prefer our Comfort Zones when life has so much more to offers us?
Because that journey to the Undiscovered Country involves two of mans
greatest fears… fear of not
fitting in and fear of the unknown.
Our society has succeeded in developing a social template that insists on
a certain type of behavior. Though
in many ways this is good, it quite often goes too far, strangling us instead of
protecting us. Whether we are
willing to admit it or not, we all care what people think.
We all want opportunity, we all want friends, and we all want people to
like us. And quite often we are
scared to do anything different because doing so might cause rejection. Take for example appearance.
Some people who are not-so-secure or are under peer pressure might take
on dangerous diets or extraneous exercise.
It is now estimated that 16% of teenage girls are anorexic and/or
bulimic. These girls are so
desperate to fit in and be “normal” that they are willing to purge or
completely starve themselves to look better.
The comfort zone has them trapped, and it’s unbelievably difficult to
break free. This pressure to act
and be a certain way is so intense in our society that all of us conform to it
in a lot of compromising ways.
But fear of not fitting in isn’t the only factor in our resistance to
the undiscovered country. Even when
no one’s around, we don’t want to do things like try a strange food or
listen to a different type of music. We
are so scared of change, and prefer to stick with things we know, good or bad,
because at least we know what to expect. Unfortunately,
humans are incredibly negative creatures. We
are so scared that if we go through that steel door we’ll fall into the huge
gap of the unknown. But we fail to
see that 9 times out of 10 we won’t fall, we’ll fly.
Instead we shut the door on our own opportunity.
As Mark Twain once said, “Twenty years from now you will be more
disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
So throw of the bowlines. Sail
away from the safe harbor. Catch
the trade winds in your sails. Explore.
Dream. Discover.”
You’ve probably been thinking about other people while I’ve been
talking. But what about you? You
just wait till the award ceremony tonight when they announce the Original
Oratory winners or the Congress winners and we all have to stand and clap.
Don’t we all sit in those chairs thinking, “Okay, should I stand now?
Okay, everyone else is standing now, how long should I clap, should I keep
clapping? I’d better stop now, or I’ll end up clapping by myself.
Shoot, too late!” We are
so shoved into the collective mind that it governs our actions, and our very
conscience.
I was so nervous about giving this speech this morning, I was thinking,
“ It’ll be horrible, they’re all going to hate it, I’ll just tell them I
don’t have/know my speech,” but I got up here.
And is everything going well? No! I’m petrified; my stomach is doing
the lambada back and forth in my body. In
fact I’m quite eager to finish this speech so I can go sit down.
But am I glad that I’m here? Yes.
As easy and comfortable as the Comfort Zone may be it doesn’t compare
to the thrill of the Undiscovered Country.
I wish I could tell you guys that I’ve over come this problem of the
comfort zone and the undiscovered country, but I haven’t.
Many times I’ve chosen to hide in the Comfort Zone.
I’ve done it many times this week, in fact I did it this morning and
I’ll probably do it a couple more times before the day is out.
You see we can’t just make one decision to walk through the steel door
we have to make that decision over and over again in every little part of our
lives. Where will we go? Will you
dare to go to places you’ve never been, to experience life more profusely, and
occasionally fall? Or will you stay in the Comfort Zone, saying everything is
great, never risking, and never really living?
The steel door is still open… and the choice is yours.
