what’s “leave the castle”?

daily drawing June 19, 2010

leave the castle is my reminder to wake up and eat life.

It emerged from story a friend of mine was telling at her birthday brunch I don’t know how many years ago. She was in the Navy reserves then and had just come back from a two-week bootcamp. She and a fellow bootcamper were telling the table of us all about it. There was a lot of rain and marching and people getting sick. At meals, they were not allowed to speak, other than in specific prescribed ways to do things, like ask for the salt or ketchup to be passed their way. Everything was regimented. I don’t remember the rest of the stories, just that my friend and her friend were cheery and laughing as they told us the details of their time there. Me, I was getting more and more tense until I announced [to myself] that I could never allow myself to be in a situation that controlled by anyone else!

Really? That strong of a reaction to a story? And one where the tellers were perfectly happy and laughing about their experience?

That really struck me. An image showed up of a Rapunzel-like moment, but it was me in the tower of a castle, a total princess, arms folded, unwilling to go outside where this kind of thing could happen.

It was so vivid it slapped me. It woke me. I saw then that I was becoming more and more accustomed to comfort. More and more surrounded only by what made me comfortable. I was becoming the kind of person I could never understand as a kid. One who knew exactly how everything was supposed to be.

Stunned and still sheepish, I promised I would turn myself around, and keep going. For a while, I kept a sign of the words, leave the castle, posted large in my living room to remind me that being uncomfortable is a good thing! At one point, I was working from home – both for my job and making paintings — and my friends started calling my apartment, the castle. I rarely left it. They would see me there, and almost everything can be delivered to your door in NYC. It’s amazing how easily you can find a comfortable space and sink into it.

But it’s not what I want for me, so I pick myself up each time I catch myself walled up cozy in another castle, and make my way back out again.

I’ve longsince taken down the ltc sign. I made leave the castle my website and company name, so that my promise would be out loud. This way I am accountable to everyone. And, no one will be surprised when I bug them about their comfort zone, and what they don’t know they don’t know about, that’s just outside it.