The Day We Stop Exploring

The day we stop exploring is the day we commit ourselves to live in a stagnant world, devoid of curiosity, empty of dreams.  Quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson @neiltyson    (August 4, 2012) on Twitter

A Different Walk Through Our Life Today

What if today, we took a different walk through our life? By that I mean, everything that we hold to be the gospel truth and the only way we view things, could be dropped for one day. What if we just took all of those things and put it in a very special lock box where we could pick them up at the end of the day.

In replacement of those views and truths we hold dear in our life, we would allow ourselves to ponder everything that we have held at an arms length from our life. We would be curious about alternatives and other ways of viewing that which we are usually against. We would take a moment and listen to view areas that seem completely opposed to every fiber and cell of our life.

Of course, I'm not advocating that you give up all your long held beliefs and truths and wisdom for your life. I am just offering the possibility that for a day, you allow yourself to see things from a different perspective. You give yourself the option of understanding another view point or thought or belief system.

Just think of all that this may do for you and others around you. All to often, we get so caught up in what we have been taught to believe or what news pundits and politicians on TV tell us to believe that we miss the greater point of being a human in this world. We spend way too much time opposing viewpoints that others in this world have rather than opening ourselves up with a listening heart.

No matter who we are, we have these parts of us that are locked in the beliefs system of our lives. Our belief system is essential for us to define who we are but if it becomes who we are, than we have failed to define ourselves. A belief system is something that is constantly evolving because as you discover new worlds, the shoreline of where you traveled from looks amazingly different.

Give yourself the opportunity to travel from your current shoreline to a place you have never seen and be curious about it in a way that allows you to see a new perspective. At the end of the day, you will of course be free to open your lock box and pull out all your treasured beliefs, thoughts and views. However, there is a chance that some of these things will look different than they did when you put them in there.



Blog Post & Images (c) 1/25/11 Don Shetterly - use by permission only
http://www.donshetterly.com

Confronted With Something New

We often see things around us, through our own eyes and the filters of life that we have experienced. Who can blame us though because these are our tools, our paint brushes and our frames of reference to view everything as a comprehensible piece of information. For without these things, we would miss out on that which we see because it would not compute in our minds and through our eyes.

The challenge we face as humans though is to understand that which we cannot truly see and that which is not clear to us. Whether it is a new concept we have not learned, a spark of an idea that does not have defining edges or someone else going through difficult times, each of these things are an opportunity for us to learn, to grow and to really understand who we are as individuals and how we fit in with the things that are fuzzy.

When we are confronted with something new, let us see if we can define the edges of it so that we have a better understanding of what it is that we are looking at. Let us not be afraid, but welcome the newness with an open mind, an analytical heart and the curiosity of a child.

*Photo by NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org