Just Give it aTry

Trying new things is a very important part of life. You could go through all your days doing exactly what you do every day, but then where would the excitement be? If you try new things you very well might enjoy them, and you will want to do them more, but if you don’t, you will miss out.

When I was nine years old, my father pushed me to start sailing. So I went to a children’s yacht club to learn how to sail, I started in an eight foot, boxy boat called an optimist. At first I hated it. Fast winds scared me, slow winds bored me and I had almost no room in the cockpit. But I powered through learning the basics of sailing optis, and I slowly started to like it more and more. And now five years later I still sail, but instead of optis, I race thirteen foot sailboats called lasers, and I have no intention of stopping any time soon.

Even if when you think of it, it just sounds way too boring or scary or even too hard, just give it a try. This is not to say “risk your life every time you get the chance” but simply try something new. If it seems like you’ll never get it, try something else, you’re bound to eventually get to something that you will do the rest of your life.

When the formally new thing gets to be part of your daily routine, experiment with it: if you become a sailor try different boats. I help my dad on our 40 foot California race boat from the sixties. If you are a musician try a different genre of music. No matter how broad your horizons are, there is always room to expand them. There are endless possibilities just waiting for you to try them.

I believe that the most important thing in life is to try new things. Even if they don’t seem like something you would enjoy at first, keep trying, you just might end up loving it.