Milestones

This last weekend I attended my second Bele Chere Festival Asheville, NC while staying at the Pines Cottages with Mom, Dad, Uncle Jahred, Aunt Erica and my cousin Kaiden. Last year, at five months old, I was not able to do much. During my first visit I was unable to walk or communicate; so I just took in what I could and left the rest for a future date.

It’s been a year now and things have changed. I can now walk, run and communicate, mostly through sign-language, and, most importantly, experience much more than I could a year ago. This year I ate everything that I could, walked around in heavy crowds, danced to music, saw all sorts of people and tried to grok as much of the art as I could. On Saturday we hiked the Craggy Gardens Trail (I only had to be carried a couple of times) and I hiked the last half a mile up Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi, all by myself. On Sunday we visited Chimney Rock Park and played in the Rocky Broad River.

Mom said that she is not sure if we are coming back next year because a lot of things could change between now and then. Either way, I will always look forward to crossing milestones, especially when I get to do it in familiar places with lots of family around me.

Experiences & Adventure

There is a specific difference between experiences and adventure. With an experience you build on previous knowledge. It is finding something slightly different, realizing it as different and allowing it affect your choices later in life. An adventure goes beyond a simple experience. An adventure expands your knowledge in ways you might never have imagined. Or to put it to an analogy, if your mind were a house, experiences would be upgrades, repairs and general maintenance (fresh paint, a new deck…) whereas an adventure could add something like a new floor, expanded garage or even a guest house.

While both are important, your experiences will always greatly outweigh adventures, for the simple fact one cannot continuously expand horizons without stopping, or at least slowing, to comprehend where you are. You must keep the house up or the new additions won’t be worth as much as they should.

Being that I am only 17 months old, I have a steady stream of both experiences and adventures. A simple trip to the grocery store, a weekend away or a new toy/book adds to my understanding of the world around me. And the more I understand now, the more I have to expand throughout the rest of my life. You see, knowledge is one of the wonderful things in life that works exponentially. The more you learn, the more it teaches and inspires you to learn more. In other words, you must continuously build on what you know to know what you don’t know.