The Comfort Zone

My incredible logo was designed by local illustrator and designer Chuck Borgerding

I hate talking on the phone. If you’ve ever tried to call me, you know this already. Lindsey has practically given up trying to hand me the phone when it rings. The look she gives me when I mouth “tell them I’m in the shower” is the same look you’d give someone who just put orange juice in their cereal. I’ll go out of my way not to have to call for food delivery or call my kids’ school to tell them they’ll be absent.

I am also not a fan of meeting new people. It’s not that I dislike people. I like them just fine once I know them. But the idea of walking up to a stranger, extending my hand, and saying “Hi, I’m Adam” fills me with the same dread as jumping out of a plane at 15,000 feet.

So you can imagine my delight when I discovered that in order to get on the ballot for Westport’s RTM, I had to go door to door and collect 25 signatures from people who, at best, knew me only as the guy who sometimes jogs past their house. This required knocking on doors.

Actual knocking.
On actual doors.

At first, it felt like torture. Every time a door opened, I expected someone to point at me like an intruder in a bad sitcom and shout “you’re not supposed to be here!” But something unexpected happened. People invited me in. They offered me chairs at their kitchen tables. They told me their concerns about the neighborhood, the town, and the future. I listened. And slowly, something clicked.

This is what being a member of the RTM means. It’s knowing people. It’s knowing what people want, and the comfort they seek. It’s not just shaking hands and putting up yard signs. It’s carrying my neighbors’ voices, their hopes, and their frustrations on my shoulders. And for the first time in a long time, I felt something bigger than myself. It was beautiful.

I also realized something else during those conversations. That if I am going to serve my neighbors, I need to do it with what I like to call radical empathy. Not just listening politely, not just nodding and moving on, but really trying to feel what people are feeling. To put myself in their shoes and see the town the way they see it. It is easy in politics to reduce people to numbers or issues. Radical empathy reminds us that every concern comes from a real human being who wants to be heard and respected. That is the kind of leadership I believe Westport, and the entire world, deserves.

The truth is, I have been passive in politics for too long. I post opinions online like many of us do, but that only goes so far. It’s easy to demand action from others while doing nothing yourself. I realized I was a hypocrite, and nothing more than an armchair quarterback expending a lot of energy but doing nothing. So here I am, running for a very small office, in a very small district, in a very small town. And yet, it matters.

There are five of us running for four seats in District 3. It’s not guaranteed. I still have to campaign. I still have to convince my neighbors that I am worth voting for. But I am hopeful. Because if nothing else, I’ve already proven something to myself, and hopefully to my kids: that you cannot stay comfortable forever. That sometimes you need to step outside of your own anxious bubble and try.

My kids have heard me say it before, but I want them to see it this time. If you want to make the world better, you don’t wait for someone else to do it. You roll up your sleeves, you knock on doors, you sit at kitchen tables, and you listen. Even if you’d rather be hiding in the other room pretending to shower.