Your mind - please keep it always open!

I recently made a new acquaintance....I didn't have to, but being someone who enjoys meeting new people and knowing them ( and also someone who has to talk, all the time!! ) ...I made an effort and in the past 4-5 occasions that I have met her, we've had interesting conversations. As a person, she seems very different from me - another country, another culture, another age group, different..... yet somehow we managed to quickly establish a makeshift "bridge". Not that I look forward to meeting her as yet...but when I do, we always have something interesting to talk about and I go away with a thought process triggered ...

 It's another reinforcement of what I have always believed in .... the human mind is best left open ...to new associations, to new experiences, to new roads. That's how we grow, how we evolve, that's how new opportunities come by, possibilities that we possibly never knew or acknowledged.

Too often we allow our minds to be closed by our past bad or sad  experiences....we presume, we are judgmental, we give the matter too much importance and then lose the courage that even a toddler has when taking baby steps towards an unknown territory ...we allow our fears and our presumptions to close our minds....because we believe things will go a particular way that will be unpleasant or unhappy. 

 Accordingly, we shy away - we pull back - we hesitate in building new bridges, walking down unchartered routes. But who will ever know what we are missing? 

 To be fair, humans learn from past experiences - or atleast they should. Maybe sometimes our fears and gut feel are not completely misplaced. It is possible that by building a new bridge, by making a new connect, things may backfire... we may end up being hurt or disappointed. But my point is - how will you know if you don't overcome your apprehensions and allow yourself the luxury of finding out. Is the risk of burning your fingers, sometimes even your heart, not balanced by the joy that you may find, by the new opportunities that this might throw up? 

 I believe it is definitely worth trying - what feels good and I am old enough to know a good thing - should be explored.... I need to tread carefully, if required, if I know not where I am going, but that will never stop me from walking down paths that lead to where I have never gone..... 

 And because I am open, I reach out, I am brave in venturing out...I have seen Life has given me more good experiences than bad....I have never stopped learning, never stopped growing as an individual. 

 It's important.

 As the famous words go .....


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