Out of My Comfort Zone: In the Space Between My Comfort Zones

Henry Buchtel is a practitioner of acupuncture and herbal medicine. Henry,  his wife Jasmine, and daughter Rosemary moved to Ann Arbor from Hunan in 2012, and have enjoyed living wedged between Buhr and County Farm parks, close to where Henry grew up. Henry practices acupuncture at Asian Healing Traditions  in Ann Arbor and Jasmine is an RN and medical interpreter at Michigan Medicine. 

By Henry Buchtel

Does exhaling take you out of your comfort zone? How about taking a step out ahead of you? How about the first pangs of hunger, or the chill of the air, when you step outdoors on a cold day?

Most people wouldn’t describe these as such. Exhaling is perfectly comfortable, as it is followed by the intake of fresh air, then another exhale, then another inhale. We know this. Have you ever stepped out into empty space? No. A step forward meets solid ground, even when you couldn’t see it. An appetite is met with food; the chill air loses its bite. 

We are so used to moving between these small comfort zones that we don’t even notice it happening! Experience from the past gives us the confidence to move forward. We expose our tender skin to the cold, knowing that we will be warm and comfortable again. We leave our shelters in the morning, comfortably assured that we will find it again upon our return.

But sometimes, we step out, and, for a moment, there’s nothing there. 

That stuffy nose turns into a headache and then boom, you are fever dreaming that there will be no end to your suffering. That honk turns into a gasp which turns into a smash-crunch-wrench, and you wait bewildered to find out if you are okay. We step to the mic and don’t know what to say, and don’t know what to say, and don’t know what to say…waiting to know what to say.

Do we return to our comfort zone? Most of the time, yes, and in most of the ways. When it returns quickly, like that first day of energy returning after a cold, there’s almost a sense of ecstasy in the return to normal.

Sometimes, however, we choose to leave our comfort zone. We choose to take great leaps out of our comfort zone, leaping without knowing where we’ll land. These leaps can be done with a sense of trust and faith. They can be made because they are the best choice. 

I moved to China at the age of 22, knowing it was what I wanted to do, and having no idea what it would actually be like. I did so with inexplicable confidence. In some ways, the experiences I had there have still left me out in the cold—they still gnaw at me in their desire to be understood. In other ways, I have fully exhaled and inhaled again, reaching a state of comfort.

The China I moved to in 2001 was, on the whole, a very welcoming environment for a young, white, American male. I took this for granted, as one does, and took full advantage of the opportunities presented to me. In my free time I bicycled and walked everywhere I wished, and, although I was often an object of attention and curiosity, I always felt welcomed and treated with respect. In the cities I would walk down the narrowest alleyways, poking my head into the smallest shops, but also stride confidently into the glitziest new fashion malls, and through the gates of the ritziest gated communities, wearing whatever I wished (blue jean overalls, ratty t-shirt, and “Liberation” canvas shoes). In the countryside I could hike across rice-fields and through villages, and camp in the hills undisturbed. I was invited to appear on TV shows, and in advertisements, and was praised at every turn for my fluency and interest in traditional Chinese culture.

That became my comfort zone—knowing I was welcome everywhere and could charm my way into, and out of, any situation.

I was once rudely shaken out of my comfort zone by a guard at a gated community in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, where I was studying traditional Chinese medicine.

My wife and I had temporarily moved off campus while preparing for the arrival of our child. This temporary apartment, while only a few city blocks from our previous lodgings on the university campus, was a world away from the environment of students and professors that we were used to. The new neighborhood was made up of older, and somewhat run-down residential buildings, connected by a network of narrow back-alleys. The wider alleys were filled with wooden pushcarts and sellers with their wares spread out on the ground on cloth sheets.

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Getting to know our new neighborhood, we decided to take a shortcut through a new gated community that we could see had a well-tended garden and wide-open plaza. I assumed from experience we would be welcomed, and, used to the open college campus, we both liked the idea of walking through a prettier, quieter place where we could relax and get relief from the hot summer sun.

We stepped out—there was solid ground under our feet last time….

I was surprised to encounter a guard at the back gate who demanded to know our address. This was not unheard of, and of course this is what any unfamiliar person would have to do to enter, but I was confident my white face and fluent Mandarin would guarantee our entry.

“No, no, we don’t live here, we live back there (gesturing down the alley-way), we just want to walk through.”

“No entry!”

“No, no, you don’t understand, we just heard that there’s a swimming pool here,” (this was true), “and we are thinking of getting a membership” (this was not).

“No entry!” More forcefully this time, aggressively holding his arm out with some anger in his eyes.

Affronted, “How dare you! I will complain to the management! What is your name!”

“No entry!” As a small crowd gathered around, we grew embarrassed. With me muttering under my breath and my wife shushing me, we turned away and walked back along the alleyway toward our apartment.

I was irrationally upset and fumed for days. Such is the power of an unexamined comfort zone! Such is the entitlement of privilege. I did not follow through on my empty threat of reporting the guard, knowing full well that he was doing exactly what he was supposed to do, and that it was I who had grown accustomed to skirting around the rules.

Getting over my irritation didn’t mean I had re-entered my comfort zone. I did not feel I understood what had happened, nor could I accept having been treated so rudely. Some glimmer of understanding, however, did start to emerge in the months that we continued to live in and explore that neighborhood. 

At the end of one of the main alleyways was a popular Halal (qingzhen) restaurant, which we frequented with other mostly Han Chinese patrons. The alleyway markets in this neighborhood were also where you would go to buy fresh Hami melons, shipped over the new highways several provinces over from Xinjiang, in the far west of China, and sold by mostly middle-aged Uygher men. 

These men stood out in the neighborhood, as much as I did. Brown or green eyes, dark brown hair, tanned freckled skin and high noses, and wearing practical clothing and distinctive hats. The younger men’s fashion tended toward sleek tracksuits, as you might see in Eastern Europe. 

It was a running joke between myself and my classmates at the university that I could be mistaken for someone “selling mutton kebabs,” another common profession for the Uygher merchants. It was funny, of course, because it was both quite possible and completely improbable. An American mistaken for an Uygher? What a joke! 

Somehow it doesn’t seem as funny now as it did then. 

I imagine the guard was as surprised as I was to find a young Uygher man with a pregnant Han Chinese wife, speaking fluent Chinese and expecting (and then demanding) to be let through the back gate.

Uyghers would not be given the leeway granted to the white American foreigner. It is difficult to characterize how they are treated in China, but I was struck by how unwelcome I felt. In a moment I was shown what it was to be treated as if I were not part of the affirmative action for whites’ program, caught unawares with my expectations held up high.

Affirmative action for whites, indeed!

Fifteen years later, we are in Ann Arbor (thoroughly within my comfort zone!), and our daughter is a teen. 

On Monday mornings I join a group of neighbors for a mindfulness meditation session led by Lynn Sipher, a local therapist and meditation leader. In recent months the readings have been from Ruth King’s “Mindful of Race.” King, a Black American, explores the experience of racism using the language of mindfulness practice.

After discussing each reading, we take time to re-center with mindfulness practice. Open awareness allows the inner narrative to settle, or at least be seen. These readings, in the context of a mindfulness practice, have allowed me to reflect on my discomfort in being mistaken for another race. 

Racism in the contemporary US is often discussed in terms of microaggressions, and I would just say that the distance between that and a “microwelcome” is quite palpable. And we know that small persistent changes over time can accrete and divert the flow of choices available to each individual.

But where can we start? King suggests we choose to intervene on the level of awareness. Mindfulness practice would have us start with noticing. Notice when and how you label people, and the way those labels influence your behavior. If you see yourself performing microaggressions, notice them. If you see yourself performing microwelcomes, notice. This mindfulness, although practiced from a state of comfort, leads to changes in how we respond when we are out of our comfort zone, too.

If fate had not taken me out of my racial comfort zone in this way, I might have trouble seeing things from the other side. These personal observations have been bolstered by reading research on the impact of changing the gender or race on a job application resume. From both perspectives, I can see that some of what I take to be a reflection of my individual qualities is instead affirmed upon those who share my racial identity. For me now to believe that there is a kind of “affirmative action” that has lifted me in this world does not take much of a stretch of the imagination. 

We exhale, we inhale. We step out, meet the ground, and step out again. Experiences from between comfort zones have value. Their value, however, is often realized from the quiet vantage point of the shore.

To learn more about Henry please visit asianhealingtraditions.com.

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