Courageous... or masochistic

It's easy to just get up to your neck in the muck of the normal. People can easily spend some forty years at a job, being perfectly content with their place in the organization. Or people could find themselves living in one place for their entire lives, and not bat an eyelid about it. Or live their lives exactly the same way from year to year, go to the same places every weekend, take the same routes and bus lines, meet the same group of people everytime.

It is quite human to do things like this. It's easy, it's the way of least resistance, and best of all, most people do it, so nobody feels bad.

If however you're a bit more restless, you'd need a fairly constant influx of new influences at regular intervals. And if those are not forthcoming, you would have to get them yourself. That requires you to start something new, be it learning a new skill, read a new kind of book, go to a place you've never been before.

You in some way or fashion move away from your comfort zone, maybe into a place where you indeed shouldn't be. It takes some courage to take the first step, and some more courage to persist in what you want to achieve, no matter how big or small. You would have to show a little more bravery if you start new things alone, without the support and guidance of friends, people in the know.

You'd need even more courage if the new thing is something most other people already know. You'd find yourself not just out of your comfort zone, but also at a disadvantage. It's like a sports team agreeing to never play home games. You could find yourself at a party, where everybody knows each other already, has history together... and then there's you with no knowledge of what is going on, and feeling and probably looking out-of-place.

In fact, courage may not even figure in here. It's more a matter of masochism. Are you willing to undergo solitude, frustration, just to experience something new?

I can't think of anything that's more human, and of a measure that's more defining of human character that that.