Seriously... I'm Kidding

like it’s your first, you would constantly be discovering the world like babies do. Babies have an incredible sense of wonder. They are in awe of everything around them, from mirrors to squeaky toys to their own hands. The simplest things are mesmerizing to them. Adults are sometimes mesmerized by their own hands but it’s usually under very different circumstances, when they’re attending music festivals in the desert.
    That’s why it’s so refreshing for me to be around my two-year-old niece. Everything excites her right now because she’s experiencing so many things for the very first time. She’s learning how to walk and talk. Recently we let her drive on the freeway for the first time. She went wild for it.
    For some reason as we get older, we lose that sense of wonder. We get jaded. I don’t know when it happens exactly, but I think it’s sometime between finding out the tooth fairy doesn’t exist and realizing the Real Housewives are neither real nor housewives.
    It could also be that we’re desensitized. Between YouTube and reality television and Cinemax After Dark, we’ve pretty much seen it all. There are very few things that wow us anymore. A child will see something as simple as a garage door opening and it’s literally all they will talk about for weeks. As an adult, we will see a human person ride a bike, catapult over eighteen cars that are on fire, land on a skateboard, slide down a ramp, and end up in the backseat of a taxi, and be like, “Yeah, that was all right. But did you see the guy who pogo sticked over thirty-eight grandmothers?”
    I’m not saying we need to live like babies in every way. I mean, sure, it would be great to get carried around in a papoose. Who wouldn’t want that? But I am glad I’m potty trained and not always trying to eat my feet like babies do.
    I just wish we could hold on to that sense of wonder because sometimes we don’t notice some of the most incredible things in the world. We walk by beautiful flowers and trees every day without looking at them. We rush through our day without even saying hi to most of the people we see. We take a lot for granted, and I think that’s why some people say it’s better to live each day as our last. That way we might start appreciating more things around us. Either that or we would immediately quit our jobs to go live in a yurt.
    If we lived each day as our last, I bet we’d all be a lot more honest with people, because we wouldn’t have to care what people think anymore. We would meet a friend for lunch and blurt out, “Hey, that’s an ugly hat!” Or tell a police officer, “If you thought that was speeding, sir, you should’ve seen what I was doing earlier! I think it was the fastest I’ve ever driven.” Or if you break up with someone you would finally tell them, “I just want you to know, it’s not me. It’s you.”
    There would be nothing to lose, and because of that you would probably take a lot more chances in life. I think it’s important to take risks. That doesn’t mean you have to do something crazy like jump out of a plane or scale an ice-covered mountain using only your fingers, a short piece of rope, and a nail file. I don’t know what makes people see sharp cliffs and say, “I’d like to dangle from that.” Obviously, if you’re into that sort of thing go for it, but if you’re not, you can start small. Eat an apple without washing it first. Answer your phone even though the number calling is “unknown.” Wait only twenty-seven minutes to swim after you eat. Do whatever you think is risky.
    When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important. It’s hard to understand failure when you’re going through it, but in the grand scheme of things it’s good to fall down—not because you’re drunk and not near stairs.
    But it’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success. When I came out of the closet on my sitcom I knew it was a risk, but I took the risk and look what happened. It got canceled. Not the point. The point is, I got back on my horse—when I found out my sitcom got canceled, I happened to be riding one of those toy horses outside the supermarket—and I pushed forward. I said, “You’ll show them, Ellen!” And I did another sitcom. Guess what happened? That got canceled, too. Not the point, either. The real point is that I kept going and now I appreciate my