How high is the ceiling until our adventures in life end? Is there a ceiling? I think of my dear grandfather who recently passed away at 95 years old. He left home at 18 for love, the love of my grandmother. Moving from the Deep South to the north had to be a challenge, especially in the deeply segregated environment at the time. He may have wondered what were the rules of the north? Will I fit in here? He didn’t talk much about his life before our family except for the distant of his father and the memory of leaving his mother, the image of her fading in the background as his bus pulled away headed for Buffalo,NY. This was the beginning of an entirely new adventure for him. 95 years filled with new sights, people, beliefs and emotions. Yet at the age of 89 on a trip with my family to NYC for the first time ever he tasted guacamole! Think of all he had experienced up to that point, yet the big smile on his face as he bit into the fresh tortilla filled with guacamole showed, this was a new experience and the ceiling hadn’t been reached yet.

So why then, as we age do we simply accept the belief that there is nothing new for us to experience? There are many videos on the internet of children trying their first food and we see their face light up like they’ve come alive finally! Grandpa had a similar experience with the guacamole in NYC. If he at 89 could still find new, beautiful adventures, why can’t we all do that?

To be Jaded or not to be…

So how after living a full life with all its joys and challenges can we avoid becoming jaded? I don’t have the answer to that. I’m 44 this year and I have lived what I consider to be an exciting life. I have gotten the chance to do many of the things I dreamed, from travel and living in other countries, working at jobs I found interesting like for an airline and teaching. I have never completely lost my love for art and music, I continue to find joy in them to this day. Yet, there has been heart break, disappointment, loss, confusion, and internal conflict with myself. All of these things chip away at that once naive person I was, they take away some of the wonder. But not all of it. I still am curious, why?

The ceiling is the sky

Because the ceiling isn’t real. We are natural born learners. Our minds are made to wonder and wander into new spaces and places. We can, I believe, walk into new beginnings in a jaded state and be shaken out of it until the next lull. Maybe that IS the point of new adventures, to keep us awake, to keep pulling us out of the jaded state. This is why I’m curious, what will I learn in the next phase, who is there, what is there waiting for me? Who will it make me become?

Grandpa never made a bowl of guacamole at home after our trip in New York , he never moved to another city, but he did have adventures right where he was. He did travel and made friends from all different backgrounds, he worked interesting jobs and loved deeply. He took a leap back in 1948 against all odds and kept living a full life proving there was no ceiling.

It’s not always a grand plan that can keep us feeling alive and fresh, sometimes it is as simple as a bowl of guacamole that blows off the ceiling in our minds revealing the bright limitless sky above us.