Beyond the Borders of Comfort

I learned something profound to me on the mobile safari I was taken on this year—something I could only really understand when the wild was wrapped around me. You can have comfort, and you can have epic experiences, but every now and then, you must choose between them.

I naively chose the wild.

And because of that, I found myself inches from unfenced lions—some prowling on the hunt, some feasting on their prize, others reclining in the dust with the serenity of ancient kings. At dusk, I watched elephants—dozens of them—march down to the water for their evening mud bath. I witnessed leopards in the throes of courtship and cheetahs streaking across the bush in full, breathtaking chase. These scenes were almost never shared with any other humans beyond our group. At night I drifted to sleep to the sounds of hippos chomping grass beside my tent and hyenas calling to one another across the dark.

I sipped champagne with my love and our new friends as I watched the sunset with a splendor I think God painted only for Africa. And then, as the sun fell, I sat at a candlelit table draped in white linen, eating meals so delicious they felt surreal, surrounded by people who felt like characters placed perfectly in the story of that night. It was unbelievable—borderline magical.

But the magic demanded a price.

I slept on a cot in a canvas tent. I used what the guides affectionately called the “thunder box.” I showered beneath a bag of warm water hung from a tree. I was clean for approximately three minutes every day, if that. The roads were bumpy and unpredictable, and the temperatures swung from chilly dawns to blistering afternoons. And though this might sound easy, trivial, or not remotely challenging to some, for me it lived so far beyond the borders of comfort that true fear threatened to sneak in.

Yet I realized something: without those discomforts—the dust, the cold mornings, the thunder box, the tiny cot—the experience would never have reached the level of epic it did. Those rough edges were the entry fee to a life-changing adventure.

And so the choice, in the end, was simple. Whenever comfort and adventure stand before you and ask you to pick one—choose adventure. Choose the discomfort that cracks you open to something extraordinary.

Life-changing moments rarely unfold in perfectly padded places.

They happen out there, where the wild things are—and where you’re just uncomfortable enough to feel completely, thrillingly alive.