Boldly Going Where You Have Never Gone Before

The Renaissance was a time of discovery and pushing boundaries. With Columbus’ famous discovery of America, both Europe and the Americas engaged in an exchange that has since hardly seen its match. Both continents were opened up to entirely new worlds, previously unknown to one another. 


Magellan also took seafaring expeditions to the next level. Though he did not survive the whole journey, one of the ships in his command completed the first circumnavigation of the globe, squashing claims of a flat earth. Not only were literal worlds opened up, but also the boundaries of the world of exploration and what is possible were stretched.

Roatán, Hondúras

Recently, while discussing this events with my peers, we were struck that this Renaissance attitude of discovery has died out to some extent. While expeditions such as the "space race" have been a call-back to this age of exploration, the attitude of bravely going where no man has gone seems to have fallen out of favor. The prevailing attitude today appears to be that exploration is not worthwhile, since everything that is worth discovering has been discovered. We erroneously place exploratory barriers on ourselves because something someone else has already done what we'd hope to discover.

In reality the wonders of exploration are not limited to the select few Armstrong’s and Magellan’s of the world. You don’t need to go where no man has gone. You only need to go where you have never gone.

I recently had the opportunity to discover new worlds for myself. I went where (lots of other people) plenty of people, except for me, had gone: Roatán, Hondúras. Not once did I think to myself, “if only I could have been the one to discover an eel, a sea turtle, of this cave filled with thousands of silver-side fish.” For me, I was propelled by the drive to boldly go where I had never gone. In that way, exploration is less about introducing                                                                           previously unknown information to the world, and                                                                                   more about integrating unknown experiences into                                                                                   oneself.