a tale of a fly in a window

Sunday Letter #71

Aug 24, 2025

It’s just like with humans and their comfort zones, I thought to myself as I looked at him.

He, a fly, had flown into my house — astoundingly quickly, I might add — narrowly missing the tiny open space between the wall and the sliding door as I was closing it. I tried to find him, as my mom and I were making lunch and I didn’t want him to get on our food. I found him on the table, and as I went to grab a towel to hit him, he flew away. Of course. Looking around the kitchen, I saw him land on the window screen of the window above the sink, and I quickly tried closing it to trap him inside. He flew away right as I got to the window, though. Wherever he flew off to, I wasn’t sure. After a few minutes, my mom and I saw him; he was once again on the window screen, and this time my mom successfully closed the window with him inside — trapping him. But before we started eating, my mom opened it. “I feel bad for him,” she said. “It’s a hot day, and at least this way he has the chance to fly away, rather than be stuck in a hot window.” I wasn’t very happy about potentially having a huge fly flying around the house, but I agreed that death-by-inescapable-heat was torturous. And so we ate our meal, and the entire time he didn’t bother us. He didn’t fly away either; he stayed on the window screen.

Time passed, and my mom and I finished eating. As I went to the sink to put my dishes in it, I saw him, still there on the screen. He was, more or less, in the same spot he had been in before. He was pacing back and forth, looking outside, (probably) feeling the fresh air against his exoskeleton, seemingly trying to find a way to freedom. He didn’t seem to realize that the window was open behind him; he was already free. All he needed to do was look around him, and fly away. But he stayed.

It’s just like with humans and their comfort zones.

Now, obviously, humans and their comfort zones have much more to them than a fly on a window screen, but the comparison works for me. Humans (tend to) love staying in their comfort zones. Even if they feel miserable in them. I love, and hate, my comfort zones. For most of my life, I’ve lived in them — whether it be the comfort zone that was doing what my parents wanted me to do/be who they wanted me to be, keeping up an image of what society (and my peers) deemed to be a “successful” person/someone who “made it,” maintaining habits I knew were bad for me because trying to stop engaging in them was too hard — and the unknown beyond them felt too challenging for me to be in — and more. All of those comfort zones were suffocating, yet they made me feel safe.

To be honest, I’m still in a few.

The day after this incident, my mom told me that she had been thinking about the fly. She thought about how, despite being free, he chose to stay on the screen. (He had still been there when we had dinner.) “It’s like humans,” she said. (My mom and I are different in many ways, but we share some similarities.) I told her that I had had that same thought too, and we had a long conversation about why people stay in their comfort zones.

It’s an extremely multi-layered thing.

How I feel sometimes. Meme from Foodiesegment, credited to zariel_vzqz on TikTok.

This week was overall a nice week for me. Some surprising and nice things that happened for me were: I practiced belly dancing; I stayed consistent with my workouts; my mom surprised me with an iced lavender latte; I had my interview with a university that I applied to for graduate school (I was so nervous for this); I found out that Molly, one of the dogs at the shelter I volunteer with and had spent a lot of time with, got adopted; I found a new, bright green leaf growing from my snake plant; I was able to reach a place of internal closure for myself regarding a few past relationships, thanks to speaking with a dear friend (you know who you are); I gazed in awe at the beautiful sky; I listened to coulou’s newest cafe trumpet meditation (his music brightens and soothes my soul); and more things, I’m sure, that I can’t remember.