While watching The Bean play this morning, I realized that she will always learn best on the cusp of comfort and challenge.
Right now, Bean can lay on her tummy really well, supporting her own head and all. She can even roll to one side or the other, for the most part without bumping her little round head too hard on the ground.
Yet, she can’t quite crawl. With a lot of effort, grunting, and occasional tears, she can scoot herself forward ever so slightly.
In order to reach this next leap in development, she will need to be both comforted and challenged.
We Need Comfort
We need some sense of comfort in order to operate and grow. I believe it would not be healthy to live in complete shock all of the time. Constant surprise would mess with your head and eventually break you down.
Various dependable comforts give us a foundation to build each day on. Comforts help us to have at least one foot back on solid ground.
Without some comfort, Bean would be all cry, and no crawl.
We Need Challenge
Although we need comforts, to live in 100% comfort would stunt the growth of our minds and bodies.
We need challenge.
As nice as it would be to lay on my couch all day, my freedom for movement would be greatly restricted within mere days of not exercising that ability.
We have to stretch our capabilities, to reach out past what we know that we are capable of.
It is a great feeling to impress yourself. When you complete a task for its own sake and it turns out better than you imagined, there is a sense of purpose and accomplishment that forms.
It is the purpose and accomplishment that builds you up. It gives momentum to the flywheel, snowballing into your next challenge that you initially did not think to be within reach.
Without some challenge, Bean would be all still and still no crawl.
The Cusp of Comfort and Challenge
Living on the cusp of comfort and challenge allows us to keep most of our mental, emotional, and phyisical wellbeing on something solid in order to support the portion that is seeking greater understanding.
With one foot on solid ground, the next is reaching into dark to feel for a new foothold.
Each time an attempt is made to step out into unknown, there is a little more light shed on what is out there.
Then, it lands. Finally, a new piece of unexplored territory. Whether it is a new skill, a new concept, or a new way of thinking, reaching that milestone expands the realm of comfort.
However, the quest for comfort is not for comfort’s sake. The newest platform becomes the place with the greatest potential. It is a peninsula of accomplishment with unknown on all sides but one.
The more the new land is explored, the sturdier it gets. This is where repetition comes in for athletics or art. For the mind this is trying out or testing ideas through thought or sharing them with the world.
Onward and Upward
The cusp of comfort and challenge is like the Knife Edge Trail on Mt. Katahdin. It is dangerous to lean too far in either direction.
To be over challenged by a seemingly impossible task could send you tumbling off a cliff of chaos, and to be coddled in comfort would send you down a different slope of unproductive stillness. What allows you to stay on the path and to reach new heights is to stay balanced on the cusp.
The Bean will learn to crawl. It will happen by feeling safe and encouraged by comfort in the milestones that she has already reached. Meanwhile, it will also happen with the challenge of reaching for the unknown by testing her abilities.
In the words of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, “Verso l’alto!“