(Part I)

What do you do when what you know is all that you know?  When your level of influence doesn’t extend beyond arms length, and whats around you is all that you reach.  It takes enormous courage to open your closet of familiarity to embrace the unknown of others.  All the views, ideals, religions, perspectives, concepts, cultures, and on and on the list can go.  We are settled upon an earth that holds billions upon billions of people, documented as well as, undocumented.  This world is literally infested (I reference that in a positive way), living, breathing, breeding, informational systems.  Plus, we have the privilege of new age technology at our fingertips, the internet!

Most of us start early, sometimes as soon as adolescence.  You know, starting to conform to the influences around us.  Rejecting the uniqueness of your existence.  Limiting your reach to just the people in your circle, your business, your community.  There is so much more than your community and surroundings.  Meaning, that you have so much opportunity to gain from stepping out of your “closet” so to say, and express interest in a person-place-or-thing that you wouldn’t normally cross paths with.  Consider even, all the things about a particular culture or nationality that you would love to inform yourself of.  The different traditions and ceremonies that take place all around the world each year.

All the controversial beliefs and customs that warrant certain behaviors and lifestyles.  All of these things stem from our demographics, upbringing and cultural beliefs.  And I know that there’s no one person that can fit all of what there is to know into whatever size of their “closet”!  There are so many facets that learning, and the exploration there of, can render.  It opens gateways to new living.  Believe me when I say that, “your way of life, isn’t the only way of life”.  We tend to become either overwhelmed or ridiculously curious.  I’m the latter of the two.  I hadn’t always though.  And I’m currently incorporating daily, my courage to step out of my comfort.

I found out that my overwhelming sensations stem from the consolation of all the preserved, inherited, maybe even cloned details, of knowledge that I thought I knew.  At least believing I knew enough about this and that, to be well-versed in just about this, and just about that (I think I just went 3rd person granny).  Only to realize, I hadn’t had a clue.  Well, sorta, lol.  But what I did realize, is that I cannot remain ignorant to what is outside of my thinking.  There may be many who fashion your views and way of life, but there may be more stationed on Neptune.  If so, I’m sure that not only the environment in which to learn, but their way of living from day-to-day would seem foreign to you.  But, for them everything is normal.  Yet, how can the two be linked together by views and morals?  You’ll be surprised.  Yes, you’ll be amazed once you unlock the mysteries by stepping out of your closet and learn.  Learn a new technique from a person that doesn’t look like you or sound like you.  Take a class in a subject you know completely nothing about.  Expose your family’s’ appetite to a cultural cuisine, other than your own.

Travel to destinations outside your city or town that you and your family may never would’ve considered to venture.  Discover and learn outside of your normal genres.  You are never too old, too young, too established, or too settled to learn something new in a new way.  There is never enough to know about anything that you think you know something about.  When people say, “history repeats itself at times”, I translate that into….Just all the many people and generations that had yet to be exposed to that which was known.