Happy Explorers Day

Or Discoverers Day, if you rather.

I know some folks have Christened this “Indigenous Peoples Day,” but that has always seemed a cop-out to me. Making Christopher Columbus a scapegoat centuries after his accomplishment — and it was an accomplishment — is emblematic enough of this age of sensitization in which we live, but celebrating people who stayed where they were and lived out ordinary lives in place of those who risked life and limb in pursuit of their dreams is emblematic of something deeper, and sadder: a loss of drive, of purpose, of spirit. It’s a surrender. A capitulation.


(Banner illustration from “10 Great Explorers in History,” at https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/people-politics/10-great-explorers-in-history/.)

So on this day I celebrate all who ventured forth in pursuit of something new, someplace different, whether grand and glorious or smaller and more personal. All the explorers and discoverers, whether in the wider world or in the confines of the laboratory, the library, the studio.

Perhaps even you, in your pursuit of your best life. As I wrote on this subject nearly ten years ago: May You Find What You Seek.

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