Where to Find Adventure

I’ve been thinking lately about adventure. It started when I decided to binge watch all of the Indiana Jones films, followed by the Pirates of the Caribbean. I love those movies. In fact, I love any well-done story with a high adventure factor: Treasure Island, The Mummy, The Lord of the Rings, Atlantis: The Lost Empire. But not only do I love them . . . I return to them a lot more often than most other books and movies in my collection.

So, I began to wonder why. What is it about adventure itself that I love so much? What does adventure give me that makes all the rest of it seem to pale in comparison? What, at its heart, is adventure? And further—perhaps even more crucially—how do I get more of it in my own life? (Apart from walking around with a fedora or a pirate hat.)

And yes, as a complete story nerd, these are the things I think about. I’m great fun at parties.

The actual concept of the word ‘adventure’ can evoke many things for many people—danger, excitement, romance, inconvenience, expense, and so on. Various dictionaries have various definitions of it. But in my opinion, I think that at the very heart of it lies one basic, simple, terrifying, wonderful thing: The Unknown.

And yes, I am capitalizing it as if it were a sentient being.

Any time we step outside of our comfort zones, try something new, give something or someone a chance we’ve never given them before, we are inviting a taste of The Unknown into our lives. We are inviting—even if on a very small scale—adventure. Now, because my nature demands that I over-analyze things, I’ve also determined that there are two particular categories of adventure: low and high.

Low adventure involves The Unknown at a base level. There’s little to no mortal danger involved. You won’t cause an international incident or wake a cursed mummy. But it does include a level of mystery. It’s ordering something new at your favorite restaurant. It’s taking a slightly different route to work. It’s letting a colorful curse word slip in front of your uber-religious family and wondering if any of them will spontaneously combust because of it. It’s something that brings you into unfamiliar territory, if only for a moment.

High adventure is much the same, only there is a crucial added element: wonder. Something that makes the blood race faster or the jaw drop open in amazement. Something that makes us appreciate how awesome and precious the world is and inspires gratitude at having seen or experienced it. There might be an element of the exotic or the bizarre, perhaps even danger. But there are also shivers of joy, aches of longing, and deep delight.

On a personal level, high adventure is much harder to bring about into our own lives. Most of us don’t have the time or the money to zip off to foreign and exotic locales, become hobbyist lion tamers, or explore unknown regions of space. Still, it’s the most attractive kind of adventure—at least to me—and I think it’s why I love these types of stories more than any other. It’s also why I gravitate toward particular genres: fantasy, sci-fi, speculative, etc.

I love uncovering new mysteries, even if only through the eyes of a fictional character. And I love the gift of wonder. It brings with it a realization that things are so much more precious and beautiful than we can often imagine, something which is sorely needed when our lives seem particularly dark and dreary. (Notice that I do not mention ‘horror’ as a favorite genre. Horror is the antithesis to wonder.)

And now you see the answer to the second question. How do I get more adventure into my own life? Surprise! It’s stories.

But . . . ! Yes, there is a but.

I talked last month about why the stories you love matter. Why it’s so important to return to the stories we cherish and to share them with others. But . . . if that’s where you stay, if you cling to what is familiar all your life while refusing to look around you at what else there is, you make your world very small indeed. I can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark a million times and get enjoyment out of it with each viewing, but inevitably the sense of pure mystery fades (I know all the answers), as well as the wonder (I know what to expect). Nothing about it surprises me anymore. There is no longer any true Unknown.

Lots of people live this way. Not only with the kinds of stories they read, the films they watch, the food they eat, the music they listen to, but with the kinds of people they engage with, the trips they take, even the opinions and worldviews they might let sit unchallenged and uncultivated in their brains for years and years (shudder). A human soul is a vast, ever-expanding universe, with countless things to explore, create, and appreciate. But so many of us set the borders to within arms length and never move them again. Why?

Because the unknown is uncomfortable. There is risk in it. The fear of The Unknown is a condition universally acknowledged. It’s the main reason people fear death—not so much for the pain or the loss of our present life, but for The Unknown that comes after. Many of us allow this same fear to play out on a much smaller scale, making all kinds of excuses for avoiding it: “What if I don’t like this film or that new artist? What if this sushi roll makes me sick? Or I get chased by a foul-tempered rabbit in that cave over there? No. Best stay where I know it’s safe. Where I’m surrounded only by what I already like, with people who agree with all I say and think, and I don’t even have to get up off the couch.”

“Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things!” Bilbo Baggins says about adventures in The Hobbit. “Make you late for dinner!” We don’t have to be faced with a perilous quest involving a dragon to be guilty of the very same sentiment ourselves.

Rarely will adventure come looking for you and sweep you away before you have a chance to say something on the matter. More often than not, it requires a choice on your part. It’s something you must seek out, or at the very least, to meet halfway. It takes courage and curiosity. It takes effort. It takes intent. I believe this is the point made by George Eliot’s quote; “Adventure is not outside man; it is within.”

So your challenge this month is to seek out a new adventure, low or high. Pick up a new book (or perhaps picking up any book at all would be a new experience?). Watch a film in a genre you’d never considered before. Ask your friends and family for recommendations on some good music for you to explore. Even better, ask the person who checks out your items at the grocery store, or the bank teller or the car mechanic. Or, most frightening of all, (*whisper voice*) ask a youth! See what’s cool and hip with the kids these days. Don’t just be an old curmudgeon and assume it’s all crap. (Hint: it’s not.)

Sure, the adventure you do find may not be anything like fighting ghost pirates on a secret island or escaping from angry cultists in a rickety mine cart. But it’ll be good for you. It’ll expand those walls, those horizons. And, if you plan it right, you might not even have to leave the couch. 

See how I met you in the middle there? I get it. I like my couch, too.