English Thematic 3: Comfort Zone

            Step out of the comfort zone makes life more colorful. Comfort zone defined as a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral circumstance by using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk (White). Highly successful persons may routinely step outside their comfort zones, to accomplish what they wish. A comfort zone is a type of mental conditioning that causes a person to create and operate mental boundaries. Such boundaries create an unfounded sense of security. The sense of stepping out of comfort zone pictured in On The Road by Jack Kerouac is a good means of escape.

            A person may reflect his or her comfort zone.  Sal’s personality is an example of a person who is comfortable with his life. He is a young writer who has a normal life in New York with his aunt. He finds himself in a comfort zone in terms of definite job and securable life he has. At one point, he feels something wrong with it. He needs something more. Everybody has a reason for stepping out of his or her comfort zone. For Sal, the idea came up after he met Dean. Dean has just gotten out of reform school and come to New York city for the first time. Sal heard of Dean before from Chad King and was intrigued by how curious about Nietzsche and writing Dean was. He casually interested in Dean’s personality and wanted to know more about him. Finally, one day Sal met Dean in person. By Dean’s body language and the way he talks, Sal considered him as a real representative of the West coast. He is a reckless-energetic-womanizing young man from Colorado who has been in and out of jail. His experience, however, was a lifetime story.

            Trip is a sweet escape. Knowing Dean and his friends enjoying escaping to California, makes Sal want to go to there too, the other part of world that he never been before. With only $50 and all his guts, Sal seriously leaved New York for the West coast trip. He found many things along the way. He has to get suffered by all consequences of solo trip to meet Dean.  Sante says, a trip is all about covering ground. The cardinal points are New York City, Denver and San Francisco, with spikes down to New Orleans, the San Joaquin Valley and finally Mexico. He challenged to do hitchhike, which means the art of believe in strangers and attract them to want to help you for the free ride, and also many other unexpected scenes happened.

            In conclusion, The trip as the way to step out of comfort zone are sometimes motored by impatience, but the most important things are concentrating as much to the experiences we caught. Sal might be late in starting the West trip. He couldn’t even do hitchhike and travel as easily as he thought.  Even though, at the end he found the joy of stepping out of comfort zone. He was not only had the joy of spent time with Dean and appreciated his reckless impulsiveness, but also all the single things happened during the trip.

Reference

         Kerouac, Jack. 1952. On the Road. New York: Viking Press

         White, Alasdair A. K. 2009. From Comfort Zone to Performance Management. White & MacLean Publishing.

         Sante. 2007. On the Road Again. New York: The New York Times Company. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/books/review/Sante2-t-1.html accessed on 28-6-2012