#138: What we can’t find in our comfort zones.
What an ornery radical taught me about vibrant living.
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"If they don't have an almond croissant, I'll take a cheese danish."
Cary's voice crackled through my phone as I stood in the rain outside Flour & Salt, the locals’ favorite cafe and bakery in Hamilton, NY.
"I don't take orders, Cary, from you or anyone else," I shot back, but I was grinning.
The night before, I'd volunteered to pick up pastries for our five-person workshop group on the last day of the Colgate Writer's Conference. When Cary had tried to put his request then, I'd shut him down: I'd show up with a nice box of good stuff, and he could choose from whatever I brought. No special orders.
But here he was, seventy-five years old with the persistence of a toddler, giving me detailed instructions while I was literally standing in line in the rain. And, a cheese danish? At this artisan bakery in a quaint college town? That’s what he might have ordered last week walking to his local bakery in the Bronx, but there wasn’t a cheese danish in sight. Classic Cary — equal parts stubborn and ridiculous.
But Cary wasn’t really trying to get what he wanted. He was trying to make me laugh.
Mission accomplished.
Worlds Collide
When I first met Cary six days earlier, I was sure we'd spend the week politely workshopping each other’s chapters, and nothing more.
Cary’s project was titled Dreamin’ and Schemin’: Ideas and Inspiration from Five Decades of Community-Building. He’d spent most of his life in the South Bronx as a teacher, nonprofit executive, and community organizer — inventing the Senior Olympics, challenging the Yankees to pay property taxes, getting President Carter to visit families with worms crawling out of their faucets.
And there I was, lifetime capitalist, sitting across from a guy who’s dedicated his life to fighting people just like me.
While he was community organizing and picketing, I'd spent thirty years climbing corporate ladders, closing deals, and maximizing shareholder value. I’ve never organized anything more rebellious than a women’s leadership summit.
Based on our LinkedIn profiles (which Cary definitely doesn’t have), you’d think we would have given each other a wide berth.
Instead, I was charmed to bits by this ornery old man.
Cary quoted Jackie Onassis and hip-hop pioneer Melle Mel with equal reverence. He's worked with everyone from Pete Seeger to Keith Haring to Arthur Ashe. When faced with impossible problems, he doesn't organize protests, he organizes parades. His solution to urban blight? Walking billboards and break dancing competitions.
Every conversation revealed another layer. The academic who became a "streetwise Ph.D." The organizer who believes in joy as much as justice. The guy who figured out how to make positive change without venomous confrontation, just imagination and commitment.
By the final day, Cary had completely rewritten my understanding of how change happens.
I’ve always understood advocacy through the lens of corporate influence and strategic partnerships. Now I also saw how it could be neighborhood block parties and children’s world fairs. Teaching at a school with bullet holes in the chalkboard. Getting a president’s attention not with political connections but with pure moral clarity and good-natured harassment.
Sitting in those workshop sessions, I wasn't just learning new things. I was having the time of my life.
And as someone who has made vibrant living my mission and my message, it’s a big deal to stumble upon this aliveness gold mine, simply by sitting next to a couldn’t-be-more-different-than-me stranger who slowly becomes a friend.
The Missing Ingredient
I spent the six hour drive home from Colgate wondering why Cary had such an impact on me. Then I remembered an article my friend shared on the work of Professor Lorraine Besser.
Most of us think a “good life” comes from happiness and meaning. But Besser discovered a third ingredient we're missing: psychological richness. Experiences that are novel, complex, perspective-changing. Aka, interesting.
It sounds relatively intuitive — new experiences make life more unpredictable, more exciting, and more fun. Variety is after all the spice of life. However, we unwittingly reduce the possibility of being surprised as we get older. We don’t mean to, our lives are just already full to bursting. We know what we like, what works for us, what will consistently boost our mood. So we burrow deeper and deeper into our comfort zones, unconsciously avoiding realms where we can be challenged, stretched, and expanded.
But, I thought I had avoided this trap. I seek novelty everywhere — travel, books, art exhibits, idea festivals in Wales. However, clearly my social world had gotten comfortable. Safe, even.
The people I spend time with generally think like me. Live like me. See the world like me.
But then Cary showed up, with his flip phone, his AOL email address, and his t-shirts from obscure outdoor music festivals in the Adirondacks.
And I was reminded that there's a kind of vibrancy that only lives beyond our favorite, comfortable things. The kind where you can’t predict what's around the corner. Where you don’t know if you’re going to like what comes next, because you’ve never experienced anything like it. Where afterwards even your familiar favorites feel different because you’ve been through something new.
Bonus: It beats learning life lessons through loss, which is how I've picked up most of my wisdom. This time my perspective got expanded in the most delightful way possible.
Just A Dash
Admittedly I don't need an ornery seventy-five-year-old pestering me about pastries every day of my freaking life.
But every once in a while? When someone I've come to adore tries to boss me around from a mile away while I'm standing in the rain? When his ridiculous request makes me giggle despite myself?
I’ll take it. The absurdity, the exasperating persistence, the “is this really happening?” enriches my life through the power of sheer silliness. And those opportunities don’t show up every day.
But it’s more than that for me. I’ll remember Cary — and that moment — for the rest of my life. Not because I was so happy, so inspired, or so proud. I’ll remember it because making a friend who is generationally, geographically, politically, and technologically different from me… surprised me.
He made me laugh and he made me think.
Fear not, I’m still a late-stage capitalist to my core. But making this interesting friend did exactly what Professor Besser said it would. It changed my perspective. It got me out of my comfort zone. It gave me some ideas.
And all those things add up to one thing: a rich life.
Pleasantly surprised,
Great read this morning, loving the openness and inspiration to live life with new experiences around every corner.
Vive la difference! :-)