Write about a time that you were brave, that you took a risk, you did something outside of your comfort zone.

Bravery. It's a word associated with the ability to stand up for yourself or the determination to take risks. So basically, no one would ever say that about me because I am a person who doesn't really care enough to stand up for myself or determined enough to take risks. I just go with whatever else is happening in my life and never step out of my established, little circle. Why should I? I like the way I am without taking risks or having to defend myself against or for anything. Staying where I am, who I am without all the anticipation, suspension, or excitement caused by and corresponding to bravery is fine with me. But without taking risks in your life, people call you boring, cowardly, mellow. You never experience the rush of exhilaration often described in books whenever someone does something exciting, brave, or dramatic. And so being the boring person that I am, I decided one day to step out of the circular wall that I have built around me and try to get a taste of what it is like to be out of my comfort zone.

The main question was how I do that. This was just the first tiny step out of my familiar abode high up in the air and I didn't want it to be too big because what if I messed up and fell? And that was not a risk that I was willing to take. But what determines whether the action you chose is a risk or not? You can determine it by whether or not your friends have done it, whether or not your parents allow it, or whether or not it is within your morals. But then that conflicts with me again. Everything I do has been done within my morals and I have never done anything against my parents' wishes. Nor have I missed out on anything that my friends have done. So does that mean that I have never taken a risk before? No, because as my English teacher, Mr. S told the class "There has definitely been a time when you have taken a risk, when you had stepped out of your comfort zone." But I definitely cannot recall a time when I have, so that means that my standards for risks is wrong. But how else could you classify what makes up a risk?The risk is what happens at the end, the final domino at a fork that then causes another chain or even chains of dominoes to fall. However, leading up to this final risk is a series of other risks, other dominoes, that all play their own individual part in causing the final action, the one domino, to fall. So in a sense each individual domino is also a risk, a final domino, led up to by other pieces and that will start its own little chain reaction. So all the thoughts, the planning, the compulsiveness that results in the final risk are, in reality, individual risks by themselves. Arriving at that conclusion then leads to the next issue of the comfort zone. We all know that the risk is definitely outside of one's comfort zone, out of my circular safety. Well given that the components of the risk are all single risks by themselves, it is reasonable to accept that these are all also outside of our comfort zone. But the very basis of the risk is the thought, the wanting to go out and do something different from the norm. That means the thought itself is a risk, that thinking itself is a risk, and that it is outside our comfort zone. If thinking were outside our circle, then basically everything and everyone's everything is outside their individual circle unless they have achieved nirvana, then which they do not have to contemplate risk-taking or ever write a paper about taking a risk. But most people have not attained nirvana and thus do think, do connect themselves with the material world in which thinking about things is necessary and thus risk-taking is necessary. But we, as people, have already developed to such an extent that thinking is just part of us that cannot be removed or even controlled. Therefore, we have deduced that everything we do in life is a risk and that it is outside our comfort zone. But that is illogical because many things we do in life are actually comfortable, soothing to us. The only possible explanation would then be that we have become so close to our thoughts that every risk we think has then become mingled with the very walls of our comfort zone and that after experiencing thinking, risks everyday, every second of our life, risks have become part of us. Everything we ever do in life is taking a risk and outside the zone but that we are all so used to it that it has actually become the comfort zone. Thus, everything we do in life is a risk, yet not a risk, and all of it results in an expansion of our comfort zone.