The discomfort of the uncomfortable

July 5, 2018

‘Step out of your comfort zone.’ How often do we invite, encourage, challenge those we work with or teach to take such a step? Certainly in the arts we regular encourage this. Yet how often to we join those we so cajole? Do we too easily take a step back ourselves and simply witness the struggle with discomfort? Are we mere cheerleaders to the act?

I am back in the Marshall Islands once again, most specifically working on Guegeegue islet in Kwajalein atoll. As I have worked on nearby Ebeye Island, it seemed an easy enough two week adventure to conduct a drama residency with a group of high school students on neighboring Guegeegue. Right from the get go, I stepped into what would be an ever growing discomfort.

Although my first couple of days on Ebeye were spent in the relative comfort of a hotel, my first residency day was to be the one I moved into a newly constructed little house on Guegeegue. But the house wasn’t yet finished. So I returned to Ebeye that night. The following day I moved all of my stuff back to Guegeegue to finally move in to my little house. As that second day was my first full day of teaching, it was a long day, a hot day and a day of during which I checked several times to see if my house was finished. The report was, it would be complete that night. Oh, and that was the first day I actually got online. Which meant I had spent four straight days without connection. I haven’t had that many days away from the internet in a very long time. Time moves differently when you are suddenly disconnected.

When I finished teaching, I was hungry. Dinner will be at 6, I was informed. Six came and went. The house wasn’t getting any closer to being finished. I had no place to be. It was hot. My hunger grew. I had nothing much to do save wait. Wait. Wait. Then the power went out. No connectivity. No house. No air conditioning. Did I say it was hot? My host debated sending me back to the Ebeye hotel, since the house couldn’t be worked on without power. At about 8:30, dinner. As we ate, it was decided that I would move back to the hotel. But my luggage was in the unfinished house, for which there was only one key and we didn’t then know where the key was. And it was hot.

So, finally, I got a ride back to Ebeye (with my stuff, thank you appearing key). I checked back into the hotel for the night, only to check out in the morning to return to Guegeegue and, hopefully, settle into that slowly forming house. A full day of class. A fading classroom air conditioner. A house that inched toward being finished. As class finished, the power went out. So the house couldn’t be finished. No air conditioning, no home (although I now had a key!) and waiting. Where would I end up?

We’ll, I am back in the hotel writing this. And pondering time. When suddenly faced with lots of time and no place to put it, what choices do you make? Quite honestly that’s my discomfort. I am not used to that much unplanned, uncontrollable time. Not used to embracing the open, undetermined flow of time. So much waiting. For what? Yikes! I just need to let time be. Just embrace that flow. Yikes!

During my first day of class one student noted that it was good for them to step from their comfort zone. They stopped into my world. I was yanked, unprepared, into theirs. They embraced it. I fought it.

What a lovely, uncomfortable, thought-provoking (and hot!) lesson for me.