If You Want to Live a Richer Life, Explore the Border Between Your Comfort and Your Discomfort

There’s More Than One Hot Take on Life

I do the New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle every day.

I don’t try to get a perfect score, I just aim for 90%. I do the puzzle to take my brain’s vitals, the way I’d take my blood pressure. It tells me whether I’m rested or in a funk, and gets the gears turning before coffee.

Sometimes I cheat.

When I get stuck I string together letters into plausible-sounding words, and once in a while, I end up making up a word that actually exists. I feel like a champ when I do that, as though I’ve somehow beat the system. I then look up the word to learn what it actually means, to do penance for the cheating.

One made-up word was ecotone.

An ecotone is a region of transition between two ecosystems — say the edge of a pond and a meadow. And because it incorporates both, it supports more, and more varied life than either.

That holds true for all borderlands.

The mash-up of cultures at the border between two countries is often more interesting than either. There’s a creative fusion that happens across all the things, not just food. When two different perspectives rub against each other it’s easier to see that there’s more than one hot take on life.

Travel to the border between your comfort and discomfort for a richer life.

That’s where all the personal growth can be found. Clashing perspectives force us to see ourselves in new ways, shift our mindset, and come up with creative solutions to our problems.