I don't know about you, but I am sucker for exploration stories. Give me Shackleton and the arctic; Hillary and Everest; T.R. and the West; Lewis and Clark and the Oregon trail; Armstrong and the moon -- voyagers, discoverers, adventurers, explorers. I can't get enough. Tell me about ships lost at sea, discovery of the newest hominoid bone fragment, space exploration, sunken treasure, amazonian tribes, summiting mountains and I am mesmerized. I actually don't care what you are exploring (space, the sea, the mind) or where -- only that you are exploring and you are willing to share your story about it.
I am certainly not alone. Just look at the popularity of Star Trek (what generation are we on now?), climbing Everest (despite the very real likelihood of dying trying), deep sea diving, and the list goes on. No, we are a race of natural born explorers who like nothing better than to see what is beyond the horizon. We want to know what we don't know today and see what we have not seen before and we want to understand...everything. And yet, does it feel to you like we are coming to the end of discoveries? The Golden Age of Exploration has certainly passed us by and the great adventures of crossing Antarctica or landing on the moon, or finding the last (we think) untouched tribe of humans in some far off corner of the world...all of those things have been done, right? Wasn't it Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of US patent office in 1899, who stated that "Everything worth discovering has been discovered" (he was not Nostradamus clearly)? Really? What is the modern day explorer supposed to explore?
It seems to me that if what we want to know is everything that there is to know, we have a very long way to go and there is plenty of room for exploration and for explorers too! Find what you are passionate about -- the immune system, the latest mosquito-born virus, space, the deep sea, the human mind -- and jump in! Maybe we don't have the same fanfare around expeditions that Shackleton had or Lewis and Clark enjoyed...but we can still kick up some dust. Get out there and explore...and let us know what you discover!
