Somewhere over the weekend, I was reading about how important it is to challenge yourself to do one new thing each day. As the parent of a child who does not ever want to do anything new, at least not without a painful amount of prodding and often a lot of whining and crying, I am well aware how daunting a new thing every day can be. Of course, that same child almost always winds up loving the new things we compel him to do, and will now sometimes remind us that he needs our pushing to get up and put on his shoes and go do something new. “Because,” he told me recently, “we both know I’m going to have fun, it’s just that I forget sometimes.”

Right.

I’m sympathetic to his resistance, honestly. It’s so easy to fall into a routine and just do the same comfortable things over and over again — to cook the same food and watch the same television and read the same books. And while I don’t cry when someone prods me to do something different, I do sometimes forget that there is a whole world of new things out there just waiting to be seen and done and tasted. (more…)