Bumper Sticker: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

           Not many people step outside their comfort zone.  The same thing over and over again is what they want—and need.  Ordering a pizza with peppers and mushrooms and onions, for example,  instead of one with pepperoni (or vice versa) is ordinarily well outside most people’s comfort zone.  When they head to an Italian restaurant, it’s always the same one they go to, and most often they order the same thing from the menu.  It's the comfort zone.  Again and again.

         
           And you can’t argue these people into a broader experience.  They aren’t happy when you ask if they want to try that Italian joint on the other side of town for a change.  Okay, they might reply cautiously, but in their hearts they worry about venturing out past their comfort zone.  What will it cost?  What if I don’t like the spaghetti sauce?  Do they have a salad bar?  My God!  What about my food allergies?!   No, maybe we ought to stick to Mama’s Restaurant, they weasel, tonight's the spaghetti and meatball special.
 

An extension to these observations about the Italian Food Comfort Zone is that trying different Italian restaurants is at least theoretically possible for most people, no matter how unlikely, while more exotic foods are totally out of the question, like Thai or Indian or Japanese.  Maybe even Mexican.  All too spicy in one way or another.  No siree, thank you very much.  I think I'll just stick with Mama's spaghetti and meatballs.

         
           Physically heading off to Italy for a vacation is just as out of the question for most people, just as outside their comfort zone, as going to the moon—and going “on your own” instead of on a Parillo Tour of Venice, Florence, and Rome, is more or less like intergalactic space travel, utterly absurd, if not absolutely impossible.  But traveling on our own to Italy for three or four weeks at a time is precisely what my courageous and beautiful wife has had us do half a dozen times over the past twenty years or so.  And on top of that, we've been on dozens of other tours and "on your own" vacations, both domestically and internationally.

             At first, I admit, all that travel was well beyond my own comfort zone, but gradually I came to like the adventures—and so I actually broadened my comfort zone. Frankly, I didn't think that was possible for me to do. These days, a quarter century and a million air miles later, I feel sort of like a one-time adventurer gone to pension (though not to pasture), the Han Solo of my retirement community.  I'm comfortable with that.