I Need an Adventure

Frequently, I describe life as a long adventure or journey. I relish the feeling of visiting a new town with my family or tasting the food of a new restaurant alongside my wife. But these wonderful moments are not adventures. No, there is something that these moments lack that my heart longs for. I crave the excitement, the sense of perceived danger, the grandeur that truly transforms a simple vacation or trip into a real adventure. What is this wild wanderlust and feeling of domestication that I’m feeling and how might I find a way to satiate this growing hunger for real adventure?

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking, “You’re creeping up on 40…here comes the midlife crisis years.” or even “haven’t you already learned your lesson? You wound up in the hospital because you thought you were young enough to ride a scooter with the kids.” To both of those claims I answer, yes. Yes, I’ve become acutely aware that I’m in the middle of my life now. The realization that the man I once was had long since gone and the ever-growing list of abilities and skills I once enjoyed may no longer be reachable are on my mind often. And yes, I did learn my lesson in a most embarrassing and painful way that I am no longer safe on a scooter or partaking in the rough-and-tumble lifestyle my children enjoy. As it turns out, where they bounce back, I simply crash-land. But, living a lifestyle that my body cannot keep up with is not what I’m talking about. No, I’m referring to something of a more heartfelt and somewhat spiritual nature.

What I’m speaking of is the feeling that comes from when your entire perspective of living changes. I’ve experienced this precious few times in my life. I remember being on an extended camping trip as a child. I was with my local scout troupe and my parents did not accompany me. It was a sense of freedom I had not experienced to that level before. I had my own tent, my home in the woods. I had my own community of fellow campers, all pitched in an arc around a large central campfire. While we were always supervised, we weren’t interfered with. We had group activities with scout leaders, but most of the event was enjoyed exploring and learning through doing. My friends and I wandered the woods, found the bones of various animals, fished in the nearby lake, and built all manner of structures and tools for ourselves as if we were living on our own private deserted island. The schedules, responsibilities, and concerns of my life were replaced with the need to gather firewood, ration snacks, to cook our own food, and to learn our surroundings. By the end of that camping trip, I had grown homesick, but at the same time I had grown accustomed to my new life in the woods. That was when I encountered the feeling…the feeling of returning home and the perspective I once had now gone. My normal day-to-day functioning had become boring and uninspired. I could only think of how pure life had felt when I left the comfort of my bedroom and the entertainment of my video games and toys. I had truly been alive in those brief days in the woods. Alive in a way I wouldn't understood for many years.

Another time that I encountered this feeling, now as an adult, was after a grand trip out of the country. I was blessed with an opportunity to visit the island of Okinawa in Japan. At the time, I had connections to someone stationed at the Marine Corps base there and was able to visit in relative security without the costs of hotels. For ten days, I experienced not only the conditions that our military members live in on base but also the indescribable excitement of seeing a people, a culture, and a location that was both similar and at the same time completely foreign to the life I was used to in good ol’ Oklahoma. The customs, the sights, the reverence for deep history and beliefs. It was such a beautiful glimpse into a new world. It really brought into focus some of the ways that our culture here has allowed some parts of life to slip by the wayside. At the end of this epic adventure to the other side of the world, I again returned home and was greeted by the feeling. Leaving the airport in Dallas, TX, I looked around me with new eyes. Where once there were beautiful signs of culture, tropical hills, tightly packed buildings, beautiful artwork and old religious shrines, now I saw the sprawling city of Dallas. As I rode the interstate back to Oklahoma, the vast openness of the great plains and the inescapable parade of billboards and highlines seems astoundingly ugly to me. It was winter, so the cold wind had long since leveled the wheat and grass of the endless acres of prairie leaving me in a cold, empty landscape that drained the adventure from my heart. Now, I’m not speaking ill of the plains and prairies of Texas or Oklahoma. I’m not that brave or that dumb. What I am saying, is that widening your horizons and broadening your viewpoint of life can make the world outside our front door appear mundane and empty for a time. As I walked through my front door and saw my home once again, I can’t fully describe the sense of emptiness I felt. The feeling of my homecoming wasn’t one of joy and relief, it was a sense of an ending that I wasn’t quite ready for. The return to normalcy that extinguished the brilliant flame of adventure that had burned inside me the entire time I was away.

In recent years, I have embraced the art of smoking a pipe and learning to slow down and embrace each moment as the magical gift it truly is. Inspired by the legendary J.R.R. Tolkien, I now love to settle into my “study” (the glassed in back porch of my home) with a good book, a pipe of my favorite tobacco blend, and a cup of hot tea. In my own way, I get to embrace and carry on the long-standing tradition of the gentlemen of generations passed. But, this treasured time with my books is what’s lead to the restlessness in my spirit. I read an excerpt from the Hobbit concerning Bilbo’s return to the Shire after his long adventure with the dwarves and wizard to the Lonely Mountain. Bilbo recites a poem concerning his travels.

Roads go ever ever on,

Over rock and under tree,

By caves where never sun has shone,

By streams that never find the sea;

Over snow by winter sown,

And through the merry flowers of June,

Over grass and over stone,

And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on

Under cloud and under star,

Yet feet that wandering have gone

Turn at last to home afar.

Eyes that fire and sword have seen

And horror in the halls of stone

Look at last on meadows green

And trees and hills they long have known.

These words spoke to my heart and I had to stop reading for a moment and think. What a beautiful way to describe a long and very perilous journey coming to an end. These words perfectly describe what the return from a grand adventure feels like for me. Allowing my mind to fully realize what all I’ve seen and experienced then finally returning to the life I knew before. Trying to squeeze all my new memories and experiences back into the life I left behind when the adventure began. But, much like Bilbo, when we return to our life after a grand adventure we inevitably find that the world we knew hasn’t changed at all. That strangely, we no longer fit into our old life like we did before. Nothing feels the same… I sometimes describe that feeling as what would happen if a goldfish from an aquarium got to experience the ocean for a day. Then had to come back to its aquarium. What would that do to the fish’s sense of perspective and it’s place in the world? Now I know that’s an illogical analogy. A goldfish likely has no sense of purpose or its place in the world beyond what is right in front of its face (and that’s sometimes questionable too) But the idea of leaving the fishbowl we live in and getting to experience something so much bigger, then having to process what you experienced as you try to fit back into the bowl you once had…that’s hard to describe.

That feeling is what I am chasing, what I’m longing for in my life. I need an adventure. Something to make me feel alive in that special way again. As many of us in this age group are prone to doing, I’ve gotten into a constant cycle of sleep, shower, work, repeat. Even on my days off, I spend much of my time either catching up on lost sleep or fiddling around the house with various projects that I’ve let get away from me. I feel like I, and likely some of you as well, have traded adventure for peacefulness and the unknown for security. We’ve allowed that part of us that longs for adventure to die and we've replaced it with patting ourselves on the back for being financially secure and having a comfortable lifestyle. We’ve become hobbits. We thrive in our routines, endlessly worry about our reputation in our community, pride ourselves on being the best entertainers for visitors and never doing anything unexpected. We’ve long since traded in our swords for walking sticks and would never leave our homes without a pocket handkerchief. I would venture to say, we all could use a knock at the door from an old wizard that would drag us out of our comfortable existences and show us that there’s more to life than having a good reputation and a comfortable chair to sit in as we sip our tea. So, I encourage you make an adventure happen in your life. Be it going someplace new, going on a camping trip, driving to another state, SOMETHING! Shake life up and see what you find. Don’t resign yourself to being complacent with a routine, comfortable life. There is so much more out there… So much more to live for than that… We were made for so much more than what we accept.

                “All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which his long white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots.”

That’s what it took to begin awakening the spirit of adventure in Bilbo Baggins, what will it take to awaken it in you? As always, God bless you all, and…Adventure On!