Adventure Awaits!

(Woodburned house sign on old pine)

Have you had an adventure lately?  Do you live an adventurous life?  I like what Helen Keller said about the topic:  "Life is either a great adventure or nothing."  Not much squirm room for gray area there.  G.K. Chesterton provides an interesting perspective on the subject:  "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.  An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."  Apply that to your next vexing circumstance!

One of America's most adventurous presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, gave this commentary about an adventurous person:  "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

Being a creative person as an artist puts one on the route of an adventurous life. It is risky and takes courage to create art.   I like what filmmaker Godfrey Reggio said about the process:  "A life of creativity is a life of risk.  It is a life going beyond your ordinary, or embracing the odyssey, of leaving your familiar, of trying to make a contribution."

(Small watercolor study of Medicine Bow Peak, WY)

What is an adventure?  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as "an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks, or an exciting and remarkable experience."

Does that appeal to you?  A number of years back I read to my four children the amazing account of Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914 epic attempt to cross the Antarctic overland with his crew.  How would you respond to a Want Ad like this?!

"MEN WANTED: FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.

- SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON"

You can read more about this heroic, gripping, suspenseful tale in the book Endurance:  Shackleton's Incredible Voyage.  

What makes people take risks and dare boldly?  What takes people to the top of the world's highest mountains, on treks across the Sahara, or on solo crossings of an ocean?  What is it that drives a human being to endure extreme conditions, to leave one's comfort zone, and risk daringly? 

(Small watercolor study of Mt. Whitney, CA)

Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Paul Tournier wrote that there is a need for adventure in the heart of man.  He goes on to say "that the majority of broken lives that we see seem to be suffering from the fact that this need has been repressed and is gnawing away inside...their lives remain fossilized, as it were, in conventionally mediocre patterns." The antidote to mediocrity in life is responding to a life of faith lived in God.  Seeking after God is the most wonderful adventure of a lifetime.  As Dr. Tournier expresses, "it takes all those who commit themselves to it much farther than they expect.  It is the source of an ever-buoyant enthusiasm."  I like how St. Augustine of Hippo put it:  "To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement."

So....what's holding you back?  Adventure awaits!

"The Road goes ever 

On and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow,

If I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way."

---J.R.R. Tolkein

Live bravely and beautifully!