Life is what happens when you're sitting on the couch

I hate going out.

If the weather forecast says it’s going to rain, I will usually skip my university tutorials for the day (like I did yesterday). If it’s going to be windy and cold, I will usually try to amend my schedules to not go out.

I really, really like staying at home.

Mostly because I’m just lazy. The outcomes might be different if I have a car (yes, I’m pampered that way), but come to think about it, they might actually still be the same. Going out exerts a great deal of effort, and it’s not something that I do lightly.

Yes, I’m wondering how will I survive working full time in the future.

At home, I feel like I’m able to do all the things I want. I can watch TV, write and have my hot cup of green tea on the couch at the same time. I can escape the wind and the cold, wear comfortable clothes and enjoy the warmth of my blanket. I can do my work, sleep, grab something from the kitchen and do some housechores when I want to. It’s funny; I actually quite enjoy housechores when I have everything else to do.

But life doesn’t happen when you’re sitting on the couch. It’s not enough to read book after book or watch movie after movie. It’s not enough to stay inside your cave and do everything else from there.

At times, you have to go out.

I remember reading Jeff Goins’s Wrecked. He said that while it’s all calm and cozy to just sit on the couch and see our lives unveiled, we all need to be wrecked. Why? Because comfortable isn’t enough.

And I realised that this is something we do everyday.

We love our couches – be it our homes, our jobs, our same group of friends or our actual couches. We rarely want to go out because we are too comfortable staying inside our comfort zone.

But at times life happens outside – it happens when you meet strangers, make friends, learn things and experience something new .

So remembering that, I forced myself to go out of the house today – first because I had work in the morning, and second because I needed a fresh air anyway. I grabbed a takeaway coffee, smiled at strangers and chatted with the barista. I enjoyed the blue sky for a good minute before the weather became too windy and I reached my ‘going-out’ limit of the day.

Nothing spectacular happened today, but something might. I guess I have to try to say ‘yes’ to more opportunities to be out there, and perhaps this way, I can experience life more instead of just seeing it passed by from the couch.