We all have fantasies of what we might do if we weren’t afraid. I’m talking about those ideas that flash in our minds, giving us a glimpse of what it might feel like to act upon something that lives only in our theoretical parts. That if you did this thing you think about often but seldom talk about, you might catch a glimpse of yourself that you always knew was there.

These daydreams might infiltrate our thoughts when we’re running, meditating, cooking, driving or lying awake at night. These flashes of what could be sometimes seem like a distraction, but what if they represent something more?

Over the past several years, our kids have largely been “removed” from their lives.

Although we’re grateful for the slow pace and the one-on-one time, there is great concern over the impact that this has had on the brain development of our kids.

Our neurodevelopment depends on critical windows of time in which certain life experiences will act as a trigger for brain maturation. We are genetically designed to express appropriate brain development in response to specific interactions with our environment. These critical windows exist in age-specific clusters from birth until our early to mid-twenties.

I remember when our son, Marco, contracted dengue fever. It was seven years ago, and we were in Puerto Engabao, an Ecuadoran fishing village largely populated by street-fighting pigs and graced with a magical point-break surf wave. It was here, in the middle of nowhere, that I realized that this fever, this illness, was different, and that it meant business.