We are creatures of incredible capacities. We harbor the aptitude to dare and to innovate and to create. Our curiosity is infinite and our palettes constantly salivating for the satisfaction of exploration and discovery. For our entire existence, humans have disregarded idleness and comfort in exchange for original, exciting, and modern. Whether this exploration be across seas or in thought is but minute detail. We are creatures of peregrinations whom cannot stifle nor control the overwhelming urge to discover, for that fervor reverberates in our most innate of senses.

Despite this tendency towards the un-forged path, we often relapse into idleness where maintaining rather than furthering is the objective. This is an issue perpetuated in the education system as students, faculty, and administrators alike recede into the corners of comfort. We have forgotten that risk and intrepidity are not necessarily perilous, and thus have blinded ourselves with assumed safety in the familiar.

Yet how will we progress? How will we innovate? How do we craft and question in the chamber of comfort?

Ease and familiarity are not rights, they should be challenged. We should not be made to feel comfortable wherever we go. We should question each other and the world, regardless of authority or status. The most tremendous of human experiences occurred when the status quo was revolutionized: the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, Romanticism. These periods surged with ardor for exploration of new ideologies or the rebirth of the old only to contribute to progressivism.

School has become far too comfortable. A student can lie back in their desks and fiddle mindlessly whilst teachers drone on— neither individual sparked by the fervor of curiosity or creativity. We must encourage and provoke debate. We must question everything as the tremendous thinkers before us did. We must find it within ourselves to be confident in our convictions so that when we are challenged, we can defend ourselves.

If school is supposed to teach us, then do not let us idle in comfort. We must be on the edge of our seats, anticipating with bated breath the brilliance of each moment. Complacency, not boldness, is the hindrance to our capacity to learn. If we deem ourselves satisfied with what knowledge we harbor, with what curriculum stretches out before us, then how will curiosity provoke new inquiries?

We must dare to ask the hard questions. Perhaps they are too uncomfortable; people may not wish to discuss race, religion, class divisions, or political viewpoints. Yet, if we do not explore the poignant issues that plague our nation and the globe, we are perpetuating ignorance. We are not preparing ourselves for reality; the world was not crafted to make every individual feel comfortable. We cannot choose ignorance, as it will never be bliss.

We must embark on the pursuit of knowledge, for that is how we have learned and progressed through our entire existence and the only way we will continue to do so. Burst out of your comfort zone and explore the strange and exotic ideologies of mankind. They are disparate and they are sundry. Color yourself with the notions of the world.