Trying it on

I’ve been complaining a lot lately about how my entire life has changed. And indeed it has. My routine is gone, my friends are different, my habits have changed, and my social life is new. I’ve heard that we can expect this sort of thing whether we like it or not. I’ve been told that change, at times radical, is inevitable and I can either resist and dislike it, or I can embrace it and allow it to take me into new and undiscovered places in my world. I can’t say which of these two options I have conclusively chosen. Perhaps a balance between the two.

In any case, with this shift comes the opportunity (or burden) to simply try new things. And this past weekend I did just that. But before I describe it let me preface it with this; In my humble opinion, as long as we are headed in the right direction, baby steps are still good steps. So… I tried two new things this weekend.

You may have seen in my Mind, Body, Spirit, Heart post that I mentioned my diet is, well… crappy. This is something that has almost always been the case and likely one of the biggest items I need to tackle about myself. Well with my crappy diet I have developed some weird aversion to eating any sort of fruit. Seriously, I can barely tolerate apples and oranges! Well I had a guest visit me Sunday morning and I decided to put out some munchies. And in it I included… you guessed it… fruit. Grapes, Kiwi, Apples, along with some nice brie and havarti cheeses, crackers… you get the picture.

When my friend arrived she noticed the fruit and voiced her surprise. And I then surprised myself by first announcing that I had never tried Kiwi and that I would do so right then. Which I did….

I didn’t hate it.

That’s the best you’re getting from me right now. But apparently what I was doing was sufficient to have caused some amazement for my guest and she said so. My response; “I’m just trying it on.”

The next thing to try on came later that night. In this case it was a Cabernet Sauvignon. Yes, a deep red wine. Simple huh? No… it isn’t. See I have been a guy who can appreciate a good wine, but has been fairly limited in the scope of what I enjoy. And I like my limitations thank you! This, I attribute to simply not knowing a lot about wine to begin with. In ay case, I have always found the deeper reds to be bit hard to take. But… on the recommendation of my friend I opened a nice bottle of Cab and wow… I really liked it! Again, baby-steps but most certainly “trying it on.”

Now, while there is nothing really deep and disturbing to share with this post, there is the message that trying it on doesn’t need to be a bad thing. And while I haven’t completely embraced it as a good thing, I can certainly see its potential to be just that… a good thing. I expect that my life is going to be filled with the new and unexpected. I’m going to try and meet those experiences and proactively identify and try new things. Like I did with the Kiwi. By the way… while I didn’t hate it… I’ll likely not be trying it again any time soon.