I’ve been thinking about how much I enjoyed my balloon ride in Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago. Tie o’ the Day is here to tell you I had a whale of a good time.🤡 Honestly, I did. There are things you don’t even know you want to do, but after you do them, you can’t imagine what kept you from doing it for so long. My balloon flight is a perfect example of that. Why did I finally do it? Because I was there and the balloon was there. Simple as that. That single hot air balloon ride added a nifty story to the essence that is “me.”.
We should do more things like that, and for that reason: WE ARE HERE. We might be surprised sometimes about how important some things can become to us, when we didn’t even know we’d ever do them. Some of those because-it-was-there experiences might turn out to be boring, or we might even regret doing them. Or they could transform our perspective in a positive way. They could alter the course of our lives for the better. But how do we know how it’s going to turn out if we don’t get out of our comfort zone and try a thing or two we never seriously considered. I guess I’m saying to get into your “discomfort zone” and explore.
Jump off that intimidating too-high diving board. Decide where to go on vacation by closing your eyes and sticking a pin on a map. Go to a concert by a band you’ve never heard of before. Take a college course in a subject you think you don’t care about. Take up a sport you hate to watch. Strike up a real conversation with someone you don’t know very well. Ask an “enemy” to lunch. Volunteer to do good deeds you know you’re not very good at.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Face a fear. Experience something that isn’t something the “you” you think you are would normally do. It can be a bigly feat. It can be a teeny-tiny step. Whatever it is, it will enlarge your soul. You will be changed forever, if only in the sense that you’ll know yourself and the world better than you did before.
Memory is what you carry with you wherever you go, but you have to make memories in order to have them to carry. Get a very big backpack to haul them around. And don’t be selfish: unzip that backpack and share your memories with others. 🤠