• I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive; but they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy that I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as grains the of sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us. [Henrik Ibsen, “Ghosts” (1881), Act II: Mrs. Alving to Mr. Manders.]

If you try something or do something or read something or experience something new, you may be pleasantly surprised at the result. It may even change your life. It may even change the world through you. That is the value, and the potential, of novelty.