We’ve probably all heard the witticism that says: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But if that is the case, then we’re all at least a little crazy, aren’t we?
We’ve nearly all engaged in behaviors that are ultimately self-defeating or at least self-diminishing. Who hasn’t over-eaten, though the last thing we wanted was an extra pound on our frames?
Who hasn’t indulged in gossip, though sharing it tarnished another and confirmed our callousness? Who hasn’t plunked down on the couch for an evening’s mindlessness before the TV, when more enriching reading or engaging activities were available instead?
And the insanity is that we don’t just do these things once or twice, but we do them over and over and over again, perhaps expecting that THIS time, something better will come of them.
Sometimes we defend our less than ideal behaviors to ourselves by claiming we simply couldn’t resist, or by insisting that this will be the very last time, or we might even try to convince ourselves that the thing we just did wasn’t so very bad, after all. Finally, it may simply be that we’re more comfortable with the well-known but imperfect results of our bad habits than we are with an unknown future that comes by trying something new and supposedly better. But living like this, Carly Fiorina asserts, is likely to get us in a heap of trouble.
Fiorina tells us that in bullfighting the term “querencia” describes the spot in the ring preferred by the bull. Every bull has its own querencia to which it will return again and again, apparently for the comfort of its familiarity. As the bullfight progresses, following each skirmish with the matador the bull stubbornly returns to its querencia, although that behavior ultimately signals a vulnerability to the matador that will hasten the bull’s demise. Still, the bull cannot seem to escape from its self-defeating pattern.
Where’s your comfort zone? Is there somewhere you go or something you do again and again, just because it’s familiar and easier than making a different, more creative, or life-giving choice?
It could be that these comfortable “querencias” of ours may be the very places where we are most vulnerable – because there we no longer dream, dare, grow, or change. Perhaps God is calling us out of those stagnating comfort zones, to a new place where a richer, fuller and more inspiring existence awaits us. We just need to be ready to step out, or speak out, or reach out to something new.
What new venture might be beckoning to you? What new hope might you entertain? What new service might you offer? What new project might you undertake? If you’ve been longing for or praying for a different life result than what you are currently experiencing, then this may be your opportunity. There’s nothing crazy about trusting God to lead you from inertia to innovation and from loss to new life.