Remember doing your science fair project in elementary school?  You would pick a statement and then do things to see if you could prove it right or wrong.

Science is all about experimenting.  When failing at something is a good thing because you learned a piece of information in the process.  When inventor Thomas Edison was trying to figure out the light bulb he said, “I have not failed.  I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

But somehow in life we don’t stick to the same hypothesis.  We shy away from looking like we don’t know.  We stay with the tried and true.  We embrace security over the unknown.

Yet poet Mary Oliver asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Can we ask a question and then see what we learn from the answer?  Ask about our relationships, our jobs, our parenting, and our friendships?  What we eat and what we read?  How we treat the one body and mind that we have been gifted with?

Canadian politician Thomas Berger said, “The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.”  So let’s ask the questions.  Let’s not be afraid of the answers.  The failures.  The missteps.  The changes in direction.  Let’s free fall into the one life we have and do everything we can to grow into who we were meant to be.

I hypothesize that you will be one of the great ones.