If you ever have the chance, I encourage you to take a few minutes and watch a one-year-old play. Don’t immediately jump into the fray, just observe. You can see pistons firing – one right after the next – as the child figures things out. Everything is new and their curiosity is fuel.

In many ways my daughter, Katie, has blessed me. I’ve often wondered what I did before she and my wife entered my life. When it comes to joy, experiencing Katie’s thirst for knowledge is near the top of the list. She is on a mission and that mission helps drive her day – so much so that Katie is not a big fan of naps. It’s as though she’s afraid she might miss something.

I think she might get that trait from her father. More often than not, I long to be out there doing. I enjoy learning new things. I relish the excitement of being in the middle of the action. Whether it be in a strategy session, staging an event, writing a news release, editing a video … or rolling around on the living room floor with Katie and my wife as we play games at home … I try to “suck out all the marrow of life” as Thoreau so aptly put it.

While trying to decide whether or not to hike up onto a glacier near Valdez, Alaska, a friend of mine asked me a question that stuck. “When are you ever going to have the chance to do this again?”

Sure, there are times when it’s nice to simply kick back, relax, and take a break from things … to take that intermission. … yet whenever I’m faced with decisions regarding whether or not to experience something new, I think back and ask myself the same question I was asked on that glacier. The answer does not always mean that I take the leap … rational thought helps prevent the overly extreme. Yet by embracing Glasgow’s words I find that my life is a mission … though unlike Katie, I do enjoy the occasional nap!