Up and out

I don't get out much. That's some combination between my fundamental nature, a lifestyle choice and your basic middle-aged inertia. I am often that object at rest that you hear about in physics, but like said object (I prefer to think of myself as a particle, but no matter) I have no particular resistance to being in motion. I just require the energy to get started with it.

For most of the last 24 hours I have been in motion in a most agreeable way. The activation energy, in this case, was supplied by my brother. My brother and I go back a ways, I guess, but our lives haven't really intersected much since the family business concluded. In this case, we managed to coordinate going to see the Allman Brothers Band in New York. I'd not seen them since the mid 1970's, but my brother is a friend of a band member and a big fan of the music, so we picked a date to go.

Just warning you now, I may draw profoundish conclusions here based on nothing profound. Our fundamental similarities and differences were evident in the way the evening developed. I'm kind of a skimmer. I'm interested in a lot of things, whether they're inherently interesting or not. And with activities I tend to be a get in and get out sort, treating things as discreet units. My brother is more of a dive in sort. He loves what he loves, and music is something that we both share and approach differently. And going to a concert, it wouldn't naturally occur to me to do anything but go, enjoy the music, and go home.

Of course, another way to approach this would be immersion. You go to the concert, you're friends with the band and so you go backstage during the intermission (necessary because the 3 remaining original band members are about 200 years old total and maybe haven't taken the best possible care of themselves), and then afterwards you go see a related band until 2am and only after that do you go get some late night pizza before heading home. So saying yes to the concert also means saying yes to going to bed at 4am.

I have to say, I see the attraction of this. I know intellectually that the best experiences happen outside of my comfort zone, but it's just so damned comfy in there. The key for me, I think, is to get myself out of that zone more often by choice, rather than because the comfort zone has somehow become less comfortable. And the best way to have that happen is to keep having experiences like this.