While I was straining to see inside a woodpecker’s nest, this Kingsnake slid right past my left foot and into this dead, tree trunk. Had it been a rattler, my curiosity might have led to a different outcome! I’ve been curious since I was little and asked a stranger, “Are you a gardener? Your hands are the same color as dirt.” He was the first black man I had ever seen. I can still see his sweet smile at my question, even now.
Time has a way of making us less curious. Either we think we already know something, or we tell ourselves it’s not worth knowing. But a sense of wonder is what keeps us hopeful. What’s around the corner? Where will I be tomorrow? What amazing human will I meet next? Albert Einstein said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” No wonder he excelled.
As teenagers, we were curious about everything. New Research shows that teens are better than oldsters at calculating the risk/reward of things. At 16, I floored our old, Dodge Dart to 100 mph but the second I hit 100, I eased off the gas. I wanted to live to tell about it. By 19, I was skydiving. Today, you couldn’t get me in a plane with no door and have me jump out backwards wearing only a poofy petticoat.
I’m glad I took chances when I was young. Sometimes they were teeny ones like asking a boy to dance. Others happened by chance, like that weekend at the nudist colony. But each little calculated risk grows you and gives you more confidence. They add up day-by-day, year-by-year until you have this crazy, wonderful sense of having ‘been there, done that’ in your bones. It is both unshakeable and freeing!
Aging shouldn’t stop us from experimenting with the tools we can still manage. For me, that’s mostly pen and paper now but there is an entire world in words I am still discovering. We’ll never be younger than we are today. So, anything you think you can attempt, go for it. There is nothing to lose but time and it waits for no one. I still go to bed at night believing something magical might happen tomorrow. So, don’t expect me to stop following snakes down holes anytime soon.
AGEFULLY AGING 
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