Urge to explore

As a kid growing up, I was big on exploration.  Lucky for me I lived on a farm out in the country so I had literally miles and miles at my disposal.  Out in back of our house was a farm equipment graveyard.  Old combines, trucks, headers, not to mention several old, dilapidated sheds.  I can't begin to put a guess to the number of hours I spent back there looking through these old treasures.  Not in search of anything in particular, yet secretly hoping for a grand discovery, the key to a long forgotten mystery, something that would in some way alter my life. 

Probably the most exciting thing I ever found in those old sheds was my dad's old go-cart, and while exciting in its own right, it wasn't quite the fabulous discovery I had been imagining. 

However, my lack of great discovery never diminished the excitement of the exploration.  With each new trip out back and beyond there was new possibility, and that alone made me hunger for more.  

During my sophomore summer of high school I went to Europe with some other kids from my school.  I was young, too young to really know what to expect in regards to traveling overseas.  My first couple days I was consumed by homesickness and overwhelmed by the enormity of being an entire ocean away from my family.  

Then something happened.  

I allowed myself to forget about home and focus on the here and now.  I asked questions.  I talked to locals.  I rode a giant Ferris wheel with two boys from Scotland whose accents were so thick I could barely understand a word they said.  I stopped being sad and started being curious.   
I got lost in the Louvre, was rendered speechless by my first sighting of the Coliseum, and listened along with thousands of others to the Pope as he spoke from his balcony.

I wandered, and I explored. 

Both of these examples, at their core, share the same moral of exploration, of discovery, or at least the possibility of discovery.  And lately I have felt a familiar urge begin to stir.  The urge to open doors and see what lies in the shadows, to visit a place I have never been before and learn all there is to know about this vast world we live in. 

The urge to explore, to learn, never leaves us.  And while sometimes we yearn for the familiar, every now and then we should do ourselves a favor and embrace the new, the unfamiliar.

The unknown.