As a kid, do you remember the overwhelming excitement of Christmas morning?  Or the feeling of rushing home from school, almost flying down the road on your bike, on your birthday?  Just knowing something new and exciting was waiting for you under that prickly tree or just around the next corner as you turned into home.  This was enough to light all your brain cells on fire.  Opening that gift was the beginning of a new adventure, a new journey into the previously unexplored.

Was there anything else you could think about or talk about once that RC car or video game was opened?  Was there a conversation that didn’t require an insertion of some new knowledge you had gleaned from the newest addition in your doll or Autobots collection?  Vast troves of wonder and excitement flew from your lips.  Things that, obviously, no one else had been able to discover prior to your journey into this new world.

Eventually, though, you would realize that someone else was required to help assemble this or that correctly.  A parent or a friend would have to assist as you searched through the land to find Zelda.  Many of us would find that the more help that was needed with your new adventure the less interest it now held for you. This thing you had been so enamored with, was now just another toy in your closet or game on your slightly tilted TV stand.

The self-asserted expert of this new experience had learned others knew more.  Some of us would then, seeing the hopelessness of achieving fame through this particular means, move on, while others would hunger at the feet of those with greater ideas to teach.  Thinking if we could only absorb all their knowledge, we could become the fastest around the track.  The first to find the princess in less than two weeks.

Have you ever heard a newly converted vegan or CrossFit enthusiast speak about the wonder of their conversion?  Not much different than that kid finding a new toy.  While it is funny to listen to them go through their new world view with the passion of a child on Christmas morning, it can be just as annoying and off putting.  But the joke, here, is on us.  Both you and I are guilty of the same thing, just under different circumstances.  It could also be we just haven’t found that thing that lights us on fire like when we were a kid.

If you haven’t found it, why the hell not?  What’s stopping you?  Grab that book or political issue and burn through it with a blazing hot passion.  If that doesn’t do it, actively seek out that hobby that you saw once in a magazine or on that flyer at the store and get into it.  Having the unbridled enthusiasm of a pre-teen is extraordinary!  We all have it, some of us just push it down inside to seem more adult.  Don’t!  Let it out, let it shine.  Just try not to annoy your friends.

Equally as important, remember the lesson from childhood that others are wiser than you about this thing.  If you have discovered a new way of thinking about a specific issue, don’t begin spouting these things off to whomever will grimace and listen.  Find those that began their journey down this path long before you knew there was a forest to explore.  Look for them in your communities or on YouTube or in books.  Best yet, all of those things and more.  Talk with those that agree and disagree with your way of thinking, but only those that will honestly hear what you are saying and don’t mind to do so.  Develop your thoughts.  When we speak about something new we often tend to repeat the thoughts of others.  There is nothing wrong with this, at first.  Read more, talk more, think more.  Allow the thoughts or teaching of others to mingle with your own.  The combined effort will result in something that is both informed and self-aware.

There is a scene in “Good Will Hunting” in which Will confronts a know-it-all in a bar.  As the tall, shaggy haired blonde attempts to embarrass Will’s friend with his newly discovered knowledge of colonial economics, Will steps in.  Will explains where these ideas that he is regurgitating came from and that the know-it-all is very unoriginal.  It is a very memorable scene.  Don’t be the shaggy haired blonde.  Don’t attempt to humiliate others with knowledge you just discovered.  Also, don’t wear your hair like that.  Just as importantly, don’t be Will.  Don’t squash those that are testing the boundaries of their new insight.  Understand we were all there once, and probably will be there again about a different subject.  Encourage further exploration, don’t stifle it.  Unless, of course, it gets you a date with Minnie Driver.