It is sparkly, star-shaped and smells sweet. The tip of her tongue reveals to her that it is sweet and edible and oh, so good. But there is a problem. As the white chocolate star melts in her mouth, its shape changes and just goes away. It is no longer that perfect star that delighted her eyes. And even though she would like to enjoy it forever just the way it was, the more powerful experience of taste takes over and in a few short minutes the star is nothing more than glucose coursing through her body.

She runs and jumps, dances and twirls, using the energy from that star to move and be and make me smile just to watch her. If she would have stopped at just enjoying the image and refused to partake of it, the full benefit of that star would not have been revealed.

Now isn’t that an interesting lesson in life? We have a choice, a free will, to either play it safe or take a risk. That choice holds the promise of discovering a wonderful, new experience or the fear of yet another failure. Which will you choose?

One of the classic complaints from most of us as we age comes from our dislike of change. We become complacent.  It could take a little extra effort and we’re just plain tired.  Another reason we want to play it safe could be that we have quite an accumulation of failures and the lessons we think we should have learned from them prevent us from what could be the next greatest success of our lives.

I think I’m going to learn my lesson from the sweet little star-twirler, who received her second wind from a star, and from a scripture, “O taste and see that the LORD is good:” (Psalm 34:8a) Maybe I will receive renewed energy to not only face a new day, but to dance through it.