Remember what it was like to go exploring?

My daughter loves exploring. Many days you can find her outside in the woods behind our house wandering through the trees and enjoying everything around her. Fallen branches become any number of things. She and her friends even have a club out back. She took me out one day to show me all of the things in her club. The rainbow branch, the stone mountain, the log where they take breaks. All of this in a small copse of trees in our backyard.

She points out all of the places where we have to be careful to avoid the holes. We meander through the woods, our sticks in our hands, exploring new paths.

She loves going out and finding new things. She's curious, always wanting to know more and try new things. I was much the same as a kid. For me, a solid tree branch started as a walking stick. It became a bo staff when I was playing Donatello as one of the Ninja Turtles. Take a frisbee and turn it upside down on the driveway, and that stick became a makeshift hockey stick (we lived in Georgia, so real hockey wasn’t much of a thing). I’ve tried to maintain that same imagination as I’ve grown older.

Curiosity and exploration is something that we often lose as we grow into adults. Knowledge replaces imagination, and somewhere along the way we find ourselves more interested in what we know rather than exploring and experiencing new things. We become concerned with test scores or getting that paycheck or managing the bills or saving up for retirement or any number of others things.

Life becomes more practical. We stick to our comforts and we lose that sense of wonder and exploration. I find myself guilty of this very thing many days, no matter how much I try to maintain that sense of wonder.

Exploring keeps us curious. It keeps us learning. It opens us to a world of new experiences. Hard as it may be, we need to maintain that curiosity, that sense of exploration. And we really need to instill this in our younger generations. They’re going to be adults long enough. Let’s encourage them to be children and play and explore and learn and maintain their imaginations for as long as possible.

Maybe you've lost that that since of wonder and exploration. It’s not too late. Find it Try something new. Learn a new skill. Pick up a new hobby. Read up on a interesting topic you know nothing about. Do something just for the wonder of it. Go out and get lost in nature. Find a new experience. Experience wonder.