Overcome Fear of the Unknown, Enrich Your Life With New Experiences
I may never have been to the south of France, but there is a chance my local sommelier has been—or at least can convince me he has been in every subtlety imaginable; while I wait in that purgatory for wine drinkers, from first breath to first sip.
I begin to think if I knew exactly where the grapes of my Chateau Latour were grown and how many generations preceded the vintage I drank, would it taste better? Perhaps, words do make a difference—but maybe not as much as our own experiences can.
We all live a little vicariously; that is a large part of why we take in all the media that we do. It is the reason I am still writing, and you are still reading. Our lives are supplemented with experiences that cannot be acquired firsthand. One person cannot do everything—a reality I wrestled with in my previous article, “Renaissance People.” My concession is that as important as supplemental resources are, they are not everything.
I believe that even the most far-fetched fantasies are still attached to some frame of reference. Call it empathy or imagination; both are means to filling the gaps of what we want to understand and enjoy. It becomes a choice of how near or far our jumping off points will be. My case is not to discontinue relationships with these resources … but to join them.
The idea of doing something for the sake of doing it is not a novel one but maybe the action is. When engaging in activities without financial gain or intent in our society, it is difficult to become proficient because it is seen as a little weird. After all, why would a person waste time on something that doesn’t make money or is not a passion? But that’s the point: It is for something else.
For example, I am more of a beer guy, truth be told. I have zero aspirations about opening a brewery but have made a few home-brewing attempts for the sake of knowing how delicate and unpredictable the process can be. I take dancing lessons, too, not to be on Dancing With the Stars but instead to appreciate body language and the coordination it takes even for a simple two-step. And while my name will never be mentioned in the same sentence as Michelangelo, that doesn’t stop me from taking a painting class either—at least long enough to learn how to match colors.
I have truly enjoyed all of these activities; not because they were easy but because they gave me perspective. They allowed me deeper connections to curiosities that I already appreciated from a different and often more distant view. They offered me the opportunity at the next party to confidently say, “Yeah, I’ve tried that.”
I have found that being worried about the mediocrity of new ventures prevents me from giving anything fresh a real chance. So, I choose to suspend that pressure so that I may participate in those experiences. Many technological advances have made it so easy to avoid discomfort that we have become snugly boring and lost the excitement that accompanies unfamiliar situations.
Constantly measuring an activity or skill for how far it will take me has robbed plenty of the simple pleasures from those very things. Real challenges and novelty are not often comfortable, not in the slightest, nor should you want them to be. My advice is to invite that spirit of endeavor into your life and enjoy it. At the end of the day, if nothing else, you will appreciate your life’s primary pleasures because of better knowing—even just a little more—the parts of what makes you love them already.
