Death of Comfort by Ian

Death of Comfort by Ian - June 2019 Scholarship Essay

The blank and expressionless classroom fell to a painful silence. “I just cannot handle it anymore,” Zhang murmured through her lips. Two of my classmates, who had been harassing her for her foreign nature, continue with their blatant, disrespectful, and depressingly prideful attitudes. Yesterday, the two classmates informed Zhang about how she does not belong in our culture, and that she needs to “go back where she came from.” Our teacher had a breakdown in front of us for nearly half an hour. The mere recollection of that memory fills my soul up to its brim with dread and anxiety.
Why would anyone do this to another human being? Why do people seek out to ostracize another person merely because they have a different appearance, accent, or way of thinking? What I learned in that classroom that day is that people do not ostracize others because they feel fulfilled. Ostracization can occur when a person or group fears the loss of identity. In other words, people can fear the loss of personal or cultural identity when they are introduced to one culture different from their point of view. A static perspective often creates the illusion of concrete comfort. The death of comfort shakes our society to our core. Therefore, we often do anything to protect our feeling of comfort; whether that’s protesting your parent’s choice to move to a new city, having to readjust and reevaluate career choices later in life, or even avoiding the thought of death. These things make us uncomfortable, and we try to avoid uncomfortable things.
We must fight this sort of behavior at all costs. The way we progress as individuals, communities, societies, and as a species is by confronting and delving the unknown. When we challenge our norm of thought, we explore unmapped region of human logic. When we challenge our comforts, great scientific advancements have been and will be made. Because of the mistreatment of one of my favorite teachers, I learned a valuable lesson: dare to confront the unknown and let nothing hold you back. This has helped me absorb tough lessons in college. Dealing with homework, incompetent project partners, and the stress of it all has been reduced because of this lesson I learned in high school. I knew I had to learn how to change how I thought and how to tackle my current problems. And because of that day in my Chinese class, I learned how to break down the chains hanging from my wrist.