"Adventure is a path. Real adventure - self determined, self motivated, often risky - forces you to have first hand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind - and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black and white"
- Mark Jenkins
Do you often think about taking off? Just leaving. Flipping a coin at the stop sign at the end of your street, heads turn left, tails turn right and go! Many of us daydream about doing something crazy like this, and it is a lifestyle I have been living for a decade now. We all have our own motivations for wanting to try new things. Some have an adrenaline addiction and always need their next "fix". Some try to break a sense of monotony in their daily routines. And some, like myself, have an unquenchable thirst for foreign experiences. What I have learned over the last few years is that Adventure is relative.
The archetypal representation of an "Adventurer" is a grand one. Indiana Jones. Lewis and Clark. Louise Arner. Inspirational people in any light. But when pursuing a life of this sort, it becomes clear that an adventure encompasses so much more than traveling to unknown geographical locations. It is about pushing your own comfort levels, which is the only way for us to grow. I suppose I can only expound on this by using an analog of things I, and perhaps you, know.
Skiing. When first strapping two poly-laminate boards to your feet and trusting in gravity and friction to do their part in exciting your body and mind, you have no clue what you are doing. It is uncomfortable. You feel a near complete sense of lack of control. When picking up downhill speed, you fall almost immediately. You are most comfortable in a stopped and standing position. You know how to do this, you know how to do nothing else. Your first lesson is teaching yourself how to go from an uncomfortable, out of control feeling of speed, and return to your most comfortable position of halt. Each time you stop and go and stop again, you become more familiar with what it takes to control your downhill motion and return to your comfort level. This is empowering. You establish patterns of familiarity. You twist your toes and knees inward, making the cliche "pizza" shape in the empty space between your skis. This slows you down, and over time this becomes very comfortable to you. You no longer have to stop in order to return to your comfort zone. You are now skiing, slowly. You have "leveled up". You begin to use one leg against the other. Your make your first turn. You stop because that was freakin awesome! You go again. Before long, your skis are parallel to one another. your legs are no longer working against each other, but in concert. You are skiing! You want to go faster! To stop, you now rarely use the "pizza" technique. You use the edges of your skis and the fall line of the mountain to stop your momentum.
Without getting too long winded here, you now see that as your comfort level increases with what you are doing, you have a greater sense of control. You are now able to further your ability, falling back on your base level of comfort when you feel a lack of control. This is true for life. We all have our own direct correlations between Comfort and Control. And pushing our comfort levels is the only way we grow.
To me, this is Adventure. A need to grow. A yearning to "level up". To do something uncomfortable, something I have never done before. And then to become comfortable with it. To master it.
The unknowns are what make us uncomfortable. The unknowns are what make us afraid to try new things. Make us afraid to flip that coin at the stop sign. But if you look back at all of your experiences, you will see this model of Comfort and Control in action. Embrace it. It is what got you where you are today. And if you are not in a place where you want to be. Find something that makes you uncomfortable. Push through that barrier. It doesn't have to mean selling all you own and hoping a train to the moon. (Although, if any of you know of a train servicing the moon, please let me know where the loading ramp is). All you have to do is break your routine. Take baby steps. If you order the same salad every Tuesday at lunch, next week, order the Tuna Melt.
Adventure is relative.
"There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it"
- Charles Dudley Warner
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