The first penguin

Every now and then, I'll have a bit of trouble falling asleep at night. I've become too conditioned to sleep on the same side of my bed with the same two of three pillows under my head. (No seriously, I think this is a real issue.) Sometimes my mind can't stop racing about certain things at night, and other times, I'm able to focus on a singular idea and ride that thought train until I fall asleep. Here's what I came up with last night...

For starters, this thing happens to me where my room almost pans out and expands greatly, all while my eyes are closed. I don't want to call it an out-of-body experience or anything along those lines...it's very hard to explain, but it feels like I'm floating into some kind of space vortex that is only darkness. It's kind of cool, and I know that when that happens to me, I'm in some kind of mental zone. I was thinking in particular last night about how we encounter things in our lives. I believe, and have for the past few months, that people fall into one of two groups - those who would rather experience something new and for the first time, and those who would rather re-experience something to glean something new from taking it in a second time. I'm firmly in the latter group, and the evidence is simple - I've blogged about the same Explosions In The Sky album three separate times. I'm not entirely sure how strong which group you're in correlates to you being an extrovert/introvert, respectively, but I have a hunch there's something to it.

I also thought about penguins, metaphorically. In The Last Lecture, which I quasi-blogged about in the past, Randy Pausch describes an award he gives out to the project group that experienced "glorious failure." He compared this to the first penguin who enters what may be predator-infested waters, because someone's gotta do it. I connected that line of thinking to looking back at various moments in my life, and how I've matured in each aspect since those moments. Think about the first week of your job, if you have one, and how you've developed since then. Think about the first month of your relationship, the first dates you went on, and how you've grown as a lover since then. Think about the difference in class participation from the end of the semester to the beginning. Growing as an individual only happens when there exists room to grow, and there exists room to grow only if you allow yourself those opportunities. You might think this has nothing to do with penguins, but that's the connection I made. Go be the first penguin - you'll look back on it knowing you've become a better person for it.