Adventure

Being a person who holds the dream of writing, I sometimes find myself thinking that, one day, I would go on an adventure to an alluring and mysterious land, a land filled with rich and exotic culture. Having gone there, I would encounter many fateful experiences. I would dialogue with practitioners of new philosophies and walk many roads with charmed strangers. The horizons of my mind would broaden till they contained a multitude of universes, universes that would spill out and write themselves on pages.

This is just a passing thought on my part. As a person, I am often content without having to travel to distant lands. For me, a person is neither more nor less exciting for having gone to a wide range of destinations. I feel a person's charm is determined by their wit, their good nature, and the level of connection they can make a person feel during a conversation.

Yet, this thought that has no real significance to me has popped up more often these days. Go on an adventure. Come back a richer and fuller human being, a being with the strength and maturity to make incredible things happen... It didn't really take much effort for me to realize: all this was nothing more than an excuse, a subconscious yearning of an escapist frightened of what the future held.

Knowing this (and knowing it keenly), it made me think about what "adventure" really meant.

What I concluded was that an adventure always contained three things: mystery, because every adventure involves discovering what is new or unknown, and excitement, because adventures are fun in a stimulating, breakneck sort of way.

Because many mysterious things are dangerous, and because many exciting things are also dangerous, adventure, an exciting unknown, most likely contains danger as well.

Thinking along those lines, I started to feel that adventure did not have to involve physical things like a faraway place or an exotic culture. You don't have to travel a thousand miles to find something you don't know. Such things can exist right outside our doorstep.

You could also find excitement close by as well. Anything can be exciting. A hot meal at the end of a cold, rainy day can be exciting. Playing DOTA on your desktop can be exciting.

"Danger" did not have to mean "a threat to life"; danger only has to be a threat, be it a threat to your emotional well-being or your sense of stability and control.

If this definition is a good one, then many mundane things in this world are actually adventures waiting to happen. Talking to the neighbor you'd never bothered to know is an adventure. Gunning for the job you were always afraid you wouldn't get is an adventure. Reaching out to an estranged, long-lost friend is an adventure. All of these seemingly mundane things could easily be called adventures, because sometimes it is the simplest and most normal things that are also the most frightening and rewarding as well. To me, real adventure is anything that stirs your heart and makes you honestly, sincerely doubt the boundaries of who you think you are.