Just about everyone has a place to live, a phone, a television, a car, and some source of income. We have clothes to wear and food to eat. With our basic needs taken care of, we drift into a dangerous place called “the comfort zone.” We lack either the sense of overwhelming desperation or the incredible force of inspiration to drive us into the marketplace. We might often wish for more. We might frequently want more.

But we have neither a burning need nor a burning desire to do what it takes to have more. The most dangerous aspect of the comfort zone is that it seems to affect our hearing. The more comfortable we are, the more oblivious we become to the sound of the ticking clock. Because there always seems to be so much time ahead of us, we unwittingly squander the present moment. We use it for entertaining ourselves rather than for preparing ourselves.