Friday, May 11, 2012

On Adventure

When I was a child, I remember very distinctly wanting to go on “an adventure.” I don’t think I ever had a really clear idea of what that “adventure” would actually entail, but that was sort of the appeal. The whole idea of adventure to me was for something new, exciting, dangerous, and most importantly unexpected. I also remember at some point giving up on this, but as I child I remember giving up on a lot of “dreams.” For example, I remember as a 7 year old boy thinking I wanted to be a soccer star and I fantasized about being interviewed on TV. I gave up a week later when I got bored of the idea. I think it was honestly more about lack of patience than a lack of drive.

As I look back on my life, there are plenty of things I could call adventures, though nothing really life threatening. Well, if they were life threatening, I was not aware (which is probably for the best, because I am pretty sure in life threatening situations I stop having fun immediately, which is why I don’t do things like sky diving). The more I think about it, the more I realise that the vast majority of things I consider adventures are all things I label in retrospect. I hardly ever go into a situation that I consciously thought was going to be adventurous. I am not sure if that means I am just a fuddy duddy, stick in the mud, or I am just like a Bilbo Baggins, and I got to wait for my Gandalf to come around and take me to adventure.

Which, talking about The Hobbit, is probably the reason why I got this whole fixation in the first place. “Adventuring” seems to have been invented by books, and stories that people tell. It makes me wonder if adventure really exists, or if it is just a relative concept. I imagine back in the prehistoric days, every day was an adventure for humanity just to survive. As time went on, and humans got to a place where more people could live their lives without worrying about their own survival. I guess people got bored to the point that they wanted to get closer to that age where everything was so threatening, but also so new and exciting.

For me, the concept of adventure has become a way to cope with potentially stressful situations. Whenever I am on the road and have no idea where to go, or get stuck outside in the pitch black night with no flashlight, or end up in some place I really don’t want to be, I think to myself, “Whelp, I guess I am on an adventure now!” and try to make the best out of it. Adventure has become less of a “fantastic voyage,” and more of the silver lining of events I normally find tough to deal with. That perhaps is not the ideal for people who define adventure as doing something drastic as climb Mt. Everest or walking across the Sahara desert, but I think it is more valuable to be able to define your own adventure than let other expectations do that for you.

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