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.
No comments:
Post a Comment