I was asked this question last week. Initially, I was at a loss for an answer. I haphazardly said, "I just want a normal life." (Because as everyone knows, my life is far from normal.) But I quickly retracted. "No, I don't," I said. "I had a 'normal' life. I was miserable. I was desperate to break out of it (and I did, without regards to those I hurt along the way)." So I threw around a few other answers that sounded good ("I want to be happy" -- lame. "I want to give my son a fun life." -- who doesn't?), but ultimately, I left that conversation a little bit disturbed, because I had no good answer. I had no idea what I wanted.
And then, on Saturday, in response to a very mundane text message -- that I was going to stay in bed for another hour and then go get a Christmas tree -- a friend said: "Your life is such an adventure." I laughed out loud as he insisted my life was worthy of a reality show. But as I continued to think about it, I realized that the irony, in my mind, is that my life is void of adventure. Over the course of the day, it occurred to me: adventure is exactly what I want. In fact, it is what I crave. The things that make me happy, the fun I want to show my son, the times when I am most comfortable in my own skin can all be concisely described as an adventure.
Since this epiphany, I have been full of mixed emotion. I have felt such satisfaction with the realization that the common denominator uniting all the little things that I strive for is adventure . . . satisfaction in finding an answer to the question. But I've been frustrated with the idea that there is no real adventure in my life. That my life is so predictable. And that I'm not even sure how to create that adventure, especially on a shoestring budget.
But tonight, while talking to the same friend who set this thought process in motion, I told him that I'd thought a lot about his text message. And that I thought it was so ironic because my life actually had no adventure. His reply was something like this: Krisi, I'm not talking about the things you do, but about your outlook on life -- the things you say, the attitude with which you approach life, as if it is one big adventure.
Wow, how that hit me. It doesn't take climbing Machu Picchu or backstage passes to AC/DC or having an exciting conversation with a stranger over coffee or taking a spontaneous 8-hour road trip in the middle of the night to have adventure. It is how I treat the mundane, the attitude that I take every day, that gives it the necessary excitement . . . the punch that's needed to get through the doldrums of life.
Do not be mistaken. I will continue to seek out physical adventure at every turn, but the conversation was a nice, gentle reminder that adventure is an attitude and that, viewed in those terms, my life is indeed an adventure.
**Author's Note** I've been doing a lot of thinking and self-reflection over the past few weeks. I've taken a break from many of the distractions in my life, some easier to break from than others, to focus on where I am and what I'm doing. It is both interesting and frightening the things that you can learn about yourself when you detach from the busy-ness of life and really get quiet. This may (or may not) be the first in a series of posts about what I am discovering.
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