Adventure

“Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life.” — John Amatt

This sums up nearly everything I had made up about adventures. I convinced myself that being adventurous means being reckless, hunt for crocodiles or swim with the dolphins in the Caribbean. Lovely thought, might still do them one day but for now, with my current predicament, I have other plans, thank you.

I have chased adventures by collecting stamps from backpacking in India, training through Malaysia, praying in Sri Lanka, attending a sick baby in Fez, hiking in Colorado and swimming in the South China Sea. I have gathered more travel notes than dust on a dirt track from a truck whizzing through the perched land, identifying adventure with no other than the grand idea of going away, I mean awaaaayyyy from my frigging life. Adventure never quite helped me settle more than a colic baby would after her dinner, so I kept chasing.

Then I got tired of risking, packing and planning. But most importantly, tired of returning to the same life as I left. Each time I returned to the truth- it was only an escape. Here is how I think it goes for some of us- A painful truth comes up, we start packing frantically and off we head to some place unknown with hope packed in our bag as if a magic formula for transformation. I still travel, seek places where I feel at home (my latest love is the woods in Cyprus) but I travel light nowadays. I only take myself as a hand luggage.

The adventure of handling daily life is so much more meaningful to me nowadays and when I conquer a fear, I punch the air. Partly because I did not have to travel to the other side of the globe for it . The more vital part of it is that it actually does feel harder to stay, look the problem straight in the eye and solve a seemingly unsolvable puzzle. Oh, the puzzles remind me of dragons and as the adage goes, “Always remember, it’s simply not an adventure worth telling if there aren’t any dragons.” Sarah Ban Breathnach. And dragons, those we have plenty of.

Adventure is just another name for fear of saying the unspeakable. It calls us as if life is out there when we all know that it is truly in here. Has always been.