We think of exploration as something that happens on maps—crossing continents, climbing mountains, or diving into the sea. But the most intimate and often most challenging territory we can ever explore is our own body.
It’s a landscape of complex systems, hidden signals, and profound connections to our environment and our future.
I was about to embark on the most intense microexploration of my life, not by choice, but by necessity.
My journey to fatherhood wasn’t the straightforward path I’d imagined; it was an unexpected descent into the intricate biology of fertility, a world of data, loss, and ultimately, discovery.
A Difficult Beginning
My wife and I had navigated long-distance work and family tragedy. After a period working in China, I returned to Europe the same day she had to leave to be with her father, who was in the hospital with liver cancer and would pass away later that year. She barely made it back home before the world shut down with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finally reunited after a decade together, with our circumstances settled, we decided it was high time to have the children we wanted. Things seemed to go well, with the happy news of her pregnancy that same summer.
The Miscarriage
Then came the devastating blow.
At the 12-week check-up, a routine appointment filled with hope, we were told the fetus had no heartbeat.
My wife, in tune with her body like no one I had ever met before, had already sensed something was amiss.
The experience was shattering. Our hopes, so bright just a day before, felt completely broken.
It was a brutal introduction to the prevalence of miscarriages and the widespread ignorance surrounding reproductive health.
Miscarriages, or spontaneous abortions, are incredibly common, with 10-20% of known pregnancies ending this way, most often due to chromosomal abnormalities that are, in the grander biological scheme, a natural quality-control mechanism.
But that clinical reality doesn’t soften the emotional impact. It’s a difficult, private grief, made worse by the politicized and misinformed public discourse around abortion.
No one navigating such a loss needs judgment; they need compassion and facts. It was a hard time for us, and it solidified a core tenet of my thinking about the world.
Explorer’s Log #1: Your Body is a Data Source.
An unexpected crisis in your health is, first and foremost, an emotional event. But after the initial shock, the microexplorer asks: What is this telling me? A miscarriage isn’t just a tragedy; it’s a data point. It forces you to look deeper into the complex system of your own biology and ask questions you never thought you’d need to. The journey of understanding begins with acknowledging that your body is speaking to you.
We were left wondering: was something wrong with us?
The Decision for a Semen Analysis
Since my wife was young and in good health, and I was quite a bit older, we decided the first step in our investigation should be with me.
Paternal age matters. It was time for a semen analysis.
Just making the appointment felt like a hurdle. Do you really want to know for a fact what state your sperm is in? What do you do if the news is bad? The abstract statistics about declining male fertility suddenly felt intensely personal.
“Fun” facts I discovered:
- Average sperm counts have dropped significantly over the past few decades.
- Sperm quality is impacted by a host of environmental and lifestyle factors: pollution, nutrition, obesity, and maybe even the heat from a laptop.
- The father’s age and lifestyle can have epigenetic effects, influencing the health of children and even grandchildren.
I was worried I’d be just another statistic in this unhappy trend.
Explorer’s Log #2: Question the Baseline.
Society gives us “normal” ranges for everything, from blood pressure to sperm counts. But microexploration teaches you to question the baseline. Is “normal” the same as “optimal”? The data shows that what is considered a normal sperm count today is significantly lower than it was a generation ago. The goal shouldn’t be to just scrape by within the “normal” range, but to understand what it means to be truly healthy and thriving.
The Process and the Silence
The semen analysis itself is a strange, clinical experience. You are led to a private, sterile room, feeling nervous, confronted with materials that feel comically out of place in such a medical setting, all to produce a sample for the lab.
You hand over the small container and leave with your thoughts: Is that enough? Is that a normal amount?
It’s strange how little men are taught about their own reproductive health.
We will joke about penis size—a metric that doesn’t matter—but when it comes to the things that actually do, like fertility and sexual health, there is a profound silence.
Getting men to open up about this vulnerability, to get checked, is a massive challenge.
For the record, a “normal” amount of ejaculate is around a teaspoonful (1.5-6.5 ml). The analysis measures concentration (sperm per milliliter), motility (how they move), and morphology (their shape).
My results for all parameters came back positive. And in a moment of cosmic irony, the report arrived at the exact same time as a positive pregnancy test.
Explorer’s Log #3: Agency Through Knowledge.
The most terrifying part of a health scare is the feeling of powerlessness. The turning point in my journey was the decision to investigate—to book the appointment and seek out the data. The moment you move from being a passive recipient of fate to an active agent in your own story, you reclaim your power. Knowledge, even if it’s potentially bad news, is the foundation of agency.
A New Perspective
We have since gone from worrying about fertility to planning around it, as our second child was conceived much faster than we expected.
This whole experience, however, ignited a new passion for self-knowledge that goes far beyond fertility. It has become the bedrock of my microexploration journey: a deep-seated curiosity to understand my body, my health, and my potential for longevity. It taught me that the most rewarding maps are not of the world, but of the self – plus, if you want to be able to truly explore anything in the world, you need your total biological self.
Your own great exploration might not be about fatherhood. It may be about sleep, or energy, or mood.
The principles are the same.
Start with curiosity. Treat your body not as a given, but as a system to be understood. Gather your own data. Question the baselines. See the connections between your inner world and the world around you.
This is the path of the microexplorer. The journey is not always easy, but the discoveries you make along the way will change you forever.