I get a kick out of the way people look at me when I say I’m waking up at 5 the next morning.

Willingly.

Excitedly!

Or when I show them my (very) green vegetable juice for the day. Or when I announce that I’m embarking on a polyphasic sleep trial—22 waking hours for every 24. Or when I mention that I haven’t worked a “regular job” in the last five years at least, and I don’t intend to do so ever again.

You know. Stuff like that. Strangeness. Edges. Poking.

Is it possible that part of my motivation to do thrilling things is the fact that someone somewhere thinks I’m nuts? (In addition to improving my life, of course. Duh.) Is it just the exhibitionist edgewalker in me? (If that doesn’t give you a rockin’ mental image, I don’t know what will.)

Perhaps I should use this particular tactic to motivate myself more often? The ability to elicit strange looks and confused responses?

Would it work?

It might. It really might. But you know what’s better? The poking. I like to poke people. I get a kick out of poking people. Many people only ever experience real growth when poked, and without poking, I think we’d all get a little bit too comfortable. We need to be exposed to the things we don’t understand. Sometimes, we need to be confronted with them! We need to see that even considering our differences, we still manage to have things in common. We need to see that the diversity around us is healthy, positive—and more than that, essential to the forward movement of the entire world around us.

And maybe I’m just a little bit of a sadist. Because I admit it, poking people and seeing the freaked out looks on their faces when they’ve encountered a mindset they don’t understand, that’s entertaining. But it’s incredibly exciting, too. Because—what do you think will happen next? If poked often enough, forgetting isn’t an option.

Might they under go some kind of dramatic learning or new understanding?

Might they open up to more change and growth over the course of their whole lives?

God, it could be anything.

Doesn’t the growth potential just give you shivers?