Yellow.

These were some words posted in my first ever blog back in February 2009 – wow, more than 3 1/2 years ago…

Chloe, my 2 year old is obsessed with the colour yellow.  If she’s making a painting, it will be yellow. If she’s choosing a cake it will be one with the yellow sweetie on it.  If I’m making play-dough three guesses what colour it will be.  I have no idea why yellow is the ‘chosen one’ as I’ve pretty much kept to the stereotype and covered her in pink and purple since she was born.  No frills, but ‘girls’ colours nonetheless.  But yellow it is and it doesn’t look like it’ll change anytime soon. Yellow is now a familiar friend.

Why is it that we stick with the familiar, bask in it, even hide in it?  There are those that revel in new experiences and unexpected change but I think they largely take us way out of our comfort zone.  I don’t mind the actually avoidance of the unfamiliar, each to their own, but I can’t help but think and chew over the reasons why we do it.

The unfamiliar is uncomfortable.  They are all over the place now but while I was at uni, pumps became the shoe to wear for us girlies.  So with adrenaline racing, I purchased my new pumps from Dotty P’s.  And wore them.  Hmmmm, they felt different from my old shoes.  My feet didnt feel right in them.  In fact they blooming well hurt and my ankles developed the most magnificent blisters.  But I soldiered on in my vanity as I knew the discomfort was temporary (stupid girl), and eventually the blisters healed and the shoes softened, making friends with my feet.  I wore those shoes for 6 years, ironically because they became my ‘comfortable’ shoes.  I guess all I’m saying its its probably quite normal for something new, even things that are good for us, to feel uncomfortable at first.

The unfamiliar can leave us feeling vulnerable and exposed.  New places, new people, experiences in which we don’t know how we’ll feel, cope and even look.  A lot of us care, even become preoccupied by how we appear to others, and cringe at the thought of embarrassing ourselves in front of people.

A little story for you.  I studied Youth and Community Studies at university and being a course with quite radical ideas, it attracted quite radical students.  Or at the very least students with strong character and values.  I applied for the course by default.  My sixth form teacher didnt agree with me when I said university was not for me and so sought a compromise on applying as a backup, and suggested this course.  So when I did change my mind (God bless Mr Mullen) I had no idea what I was letting myself into.  On my first day I walked into a room of over confident youth workers and seriously considered commando crawling under the chairs to the far corner, out of sight.  No such luck.  Ice breakers.  If you’ve played the ‘chair’ game you’ll understand it is, in fairness, one of the milder ice breakers one can play – you pretty much sit in a circle and someone standing in the centre calls out something and if it applies to you you have to stand up and find a different chair, the last one standing would then have to call out something else.  My nightmare.  Everybody else seemed quite happily confident in standing in the centre of everyone, while I was manically working out strategies for making sure I’d find an alternative seat when needed.  And so when something was called out which applied to me, I shot up out of my seat, eyes fixed on a chair at the other side of the circle and galloped towards it.  As I approached the seat, someone else appeared out of no-where and began to sit on that chair – but it was too late, I was going too fast to slow down.  I crashed between that chair and the one next to it (my aiming has never been great) and took out the young lad with me.  Blend in on that first day, I did not.  Look stupid and embarrass myself I very much did.

Had I not been so desperate to be invisible, so bothered about what other people might think about me, I probably wouldn’t have charged at that chair with such fortitude.  I think there’s a freedom that comes in making peace with looking silly sometimes.  Lets look silly more.  It might be fun.  Lets question why we’re scared to try something new and let’s have more confidence in ourselves to approach the unfamiliar.