It gets boring in my comfort zone…
I’d like to start out with a confession:
I hate loud, sudden noises. I’ve been that way ever since I was a very small child (as opposed to the old, fat child I am now). Some fireworks make me cringe like I just heard one of the Kardashians talk. The official term is “ligyrophobia”, and it is a full blown phobia. In my particular case, it’s “full blown” but still relatively mild compared to others with it. I don’t get reduced to a quivering puddle of sobbing fear in a corner during a thunder storm, etc. Hearing a loud crack of thunder or that first rifle going off every time I step out of my car at the gun range still has me ducking for cover every time.
I think it goes without saying that this strange phobia makes my love of guns a surprising development. Ultimately, that is the point of this particular entry: getting out of your comfort zone.
I can’t remember if someone said it before me or not (and as a result my ego says to take credit for it) but I have repeatedly told people that you can never truly grow unless you step far out of your comfort zone. Stepping out of that zone, unfortunately, triggers a different phobia that is shared by more people than any other: Metathesiophobia, the fear of change. Believe it or not, metathesiophobia is the most widespread phobia there is. Even more than a fear of clowns or heights.
There was a university study a while back that found that the majority of people would rather give a speech in front of a huge crowd of people or dangle from a spec high up perch than to have a large change in their life.
Time to bring this back to gun education…
I love my 9mm. The bang isn’t that big of a bang. The recoil isn’t a big deal. It’s an all around great gun to shoot. I’ve gotten quite good with it. Does that qualify me as a “shooter” in my mind? Not even remotely. It has taken a couple of years to get to a point where I wasn’t cringing every time my trigger got to the break.
Now I’m feeling this twinge….a desire almost…to expand. I want something bigger. I want to expand my horizons. I don’t want some super easy to shoot 9mm Glock. I want something beefy. I want something that’s going to make me cringe again and cringe worse than before. I want something that’s going to punish me to fire incorrectly. Something that will take a chunk out of my hand if I even think of the word “limp-wristing” within 10 feet of the gun. I want a gun that will keep me up at night from fear of taking it to the range the next day.
Why would I want to subject myself to that? Is it because I’m a masochistic lunatic who likes to punish myself? Maybe but what I do on Saturday nights is my own business.
The real reason is because if I can learn to shoot that monster gun and shoot it well, then I can theoretically shoot just about anything below it and, by extension, conquer at least a small portion of that phobia. I don’t like to “overcome” challenges. I like to kick challenges in the groin then pour my drink out on its head.
It is the desire to constantly challenge one’s self that causes them to always be improving.
As someone that I know for certain wasn’t me once said: “It’s only what you learn after you know everything that counts.”
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