Expand Yourself

My dearest readers,

I recently stumbled across an article on "The Importance of Breaking Free of…Yourself," which I found to be too vastly grounded in Chinese philosophy on the one hand, yet had it made valuable claims concerning the expansion of one’s horizon on the other. Since I’ve written about breaking free before and refrain from comfort zone discourse at large, I tried to find a way that is tangent to both, forged into a short proposition: Overcome yourself in order to expand yourself!

Recording artist Drake sings in one of his songs "I’m leaving, I’m leaving, you know I got my reasons." About a year ago, however, I wrote a post against that, about coming home once all of the work is done, little of which was and is true, because a year ago I couldn’t entirely grasp what all was awaiting me once I had come home. It seemed like there was always another departure hanging from the ceiling, watching, judging, and demanding. And with that overseeing the course of what was to follow, I soon came to notice that it was never—in itself—the premise of coming home once my tasks were in the books, it was and is by no means this pleasurable feeling to let lose a drive and motivation I (and figuratively we) formerly had no idea existed. What is more, it were the willingness and the amenability to make new moves out into the wide open that kept me going, and it is concisely this dynamic between departure and return that distinguishes the shrewd from the careless in general.

I do not (primarily) want to talk about leaving the comfort zone in order to make moves in life, but I want to bring to (your) attention that in order to expand ourselves we must continually thrust outside of what we’re comfortable and familiar with, or at least have the appetence to do that. There is a tremendous amount of potential within you, within all of us, so why compromise that with the lack of desire to exploit it? This being said, let us all be aware that leaving what we know, at times leaving everything behind, is generally a reasonable personal concern that often prevents us from trying new things, which eventually barricades up the extent of opportunity we either have or could have; and is trying to avoid that alone not a damn good reason to take your coat and your leave and bust into the wide open to not only see what is out there, but to see what is within you?

"Go hard or go home!" they say, and you shall know that you can always go home; but it is for the shrewd to go out there, and explore and exploit. In the end, everything we do is just everything we’ve done (cf. Corey Taylor), but be aware that we are also held accountable for the things we haven’t done. "Your perspective on life comes from the cage you were held captive in" (Shannon L. Alder). In that sense, it is all up to you whether you stay home or leave (and break free) in order to expand yourself, because that will determine the quality of your opportunities, and separate the ones you have and the ones you could have from the ones you could have had.

Expand yourself! Be present not only where you or others expect it. Be present elsewhere, in pain and predicaments; be unexpected, unpredictable—and do so every step of the way; for then you are to find your true potential, the self-affirming ego boost we so often strive for—and let that be thy personal #MomentumToGo!