By Steve Price
Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend about embracing the spirit of adventure within oneself and felt it worthy of discourse. As someone who lives attached to a ventilator with restricted movement, the spirit of adventure is often relegated to getting a solid, deep breath of air without feeling as though I am going to have a coughing fit. Suffice to say, our two perspectives on the concept of embracing that innate push within most people to get out and explore the world in their own unique way were, if not complementary, fellow travelers in the melancholiest sense of the term. Adventure for the infirm is often a paradigm foreign to most people, rife with daily struggles that most would take for granted.
Yet as I grappled with the physical manifestation of the phenomenon, that desire to explore a mysterious world rife with treasures to be discovered, the philosophical connotations of the concept began to run wild in my over-active imagination. I was soon befuddled by the realization that, despite a broken body and mired conscience, there was still that innate push within me, the desire, the craving for adventure. Only in my case, that sense of adventure was not merely a longing to see a world that has become foreign to me, shut away behind the mechanical hum of machinery keeping me breathing correctly. It was a pulsating tendril in my subconscious mind trying to get a handle on who I was – the great undiscovered country of self.
Knowing thyself is a philosophical time bomb that greater minds than I have struggled with over the millennia, and I dare not presume to lecture anyone on the importance or wherewithal of coming to grips with who you are as an individual. Rather, there is an innate drive within most people that serves as an ever-present itch that we often cannot resist scratching at = purposing to discover something about ourselves that seems elusive or just beyond our mind’s comprehension. Think back to the moments when you had a chance to think to yourself about yourself, wondering aloud perhaps if there was some seminal discovery to be had while doing some soul searching? Or all those times we would air out our dirty laundry before ourselves, painting an unpleasant picture of ourselves as if to motivate us to find another gear on the inside.
This journey to self-discovery is not a novel one, nor is it unseemly to take. Some of the most beloved characters of literature stake their entire literary reputations on journeys of self-discovery in the works of their authors. From classic tales featuring Allan Quatermain and Sherlock Holmes to more modern fare involving the likes of Dirk Pitt and Roland Deschain, the action and adventure of the characters’ journeys are often interchangeable set pieces whose real meat and potatoes comes from the existential growth experienced by the characters. Some of the most satisfying reading experiences comes from witnessing the internal struggle and growth of our lead characters over multiple stories, using various plot devices to reflect in a literary sense the same internalized compartmentalization we experience in reality.
I would recommend thusly that you take a moment to examine your personal life this week; really sit down and facilitate some time to self-identify the different parts of your daily routine that make you happy, and those parts that leave you wanting. Redirect some energy spent wiling away your time playing a game on the computer and analyze where your headspace is at; reflect on your goals and how close you are to obtaining them, or else what needs to be done to close the gap between you and them. Rectifying the obstacles between what we desire and where we are in the pursuit thereof is often a reticent tool in our capacity to self-critique. Yet it is that very tool that will help to answer the call to adventure that so many of us feel.
At the end of the day, there exists a sort of spiritual grace in the pursuit of one’s dreams, yet far too often we allow the rigors of life to come between us and our goals. Often times we talk ourselves down from the pursuit of those glorious dreams, meriting attention instead to the mundane and the boring. And believe me, there is no shame in this; it is a plea for safety in an unsafe world deigned to come at you full force and wear you down, I get that. But one can never truly live a life satisfied without attempting to reach for the stars once in awhile. Dreaming dreams are the stuff our own personal legends are made from. Reach down deep today and strive to live out your dreams; may the pursuit therein be a good one, always.
