Exploration

"You are really sad. What's the matter?" I asked.

"There's nothing left for me to explore," Makani whined. We were having a history lesson on the explorers throughout history. There are no textbooks in our home schooling, just library books, and normally she loves these kinds of books, reading about intriguing people in history or fascinating animals in science.

I flipped through to the end of the book. "See? Space and the ocean haven't been explored yet."

"But I want to explore an island."

"You still can."

"No, I want to be the first."

I can't blame her; I felt the same way when I was a kid. These stories ventrue into places that had never yet been seen by the civilized world. I tried to point out to her that it was the civilized world, not the human eye, that had never seen these places. "Look at this picture again. See, they had a guide. They didn't discover it. There were people already there."

There was no consoling her though, and I realized she needed to work it out for herself. I sent her off to bed but continued to think about it for myself. There really is a world out there that can still be explored. It only has to be new to me for it to be exploration. Isn't that why I write? Challenging myself to weave a story is a type of exploration. It is why I take long walks, read new books, study a new subject like learning Japanese, dream big dreams...

What do you do to explore the world around you?