Each spring I find myself coming down with a bug.
There are never advertisements on the radio for shots that can be taken for what I experience, yet it arrives around the same time each year without fail. My experience becomes an unavoidable desire to spread wings and soar to far-distant corners of this magnificent planet we reside upon. My thoughts swirl around worldly adventures until my heart literally patters with excitement. I have a fever for travel.
With my mind shifting to the experiences of past adventures my contemplative nature entices ponderings of where I will be headed in coming months. As these thoughts churn I can’t help but wonder what it is that sparks such a strong desire for adventure. Even more so, what is it that those around me can do to overcome the obstacle of fear to allow themselves to enrich their lives with such an adventurous process of thought?
Living an adventurous life requires one to release themselves of many fears the lot of us clench within our white knuckled fingers.
Living an adventurous life requires one to release themselves of many fears the lot of us clench within our white knuckled fingers. What we fail to realize is that the same hands that pull our security blankets so close are the same hands that choke the throats of an exciting life to live. Getting out, far past the reaches of our comfort zone, takes some getting used to. Once one realizes that the life we live is a ride to enjoy to it’s fullest, we soon realize that living conservatively makes much less sense. Saving is good, don’t get me wrong, but be sure you are clear about why you are saving. Putting things off is fine, just be sure to consider a reasonable length of time to forgo real life experiences.
Never forget that as the world circles the mighty sun, that mighty sun brings forth the coming of age…. yours. My father transitioned years back. An experience like that is often a swift kick in the ass disguised as a disappointing circumstance of life. That is exactly what it was for me. Dad had many dreams and that is exactly what they shall remain. In short order, I got a move on. I took a chance on me. With that my life took some big leaps, including decisions that one would hardly categorize as conservative. Decisions I made became bold, not necessarily risky, just bold. These were decisions focused on the betterment of my own life.
I recognized that I had to bring out my own happiness in order to exchange that energy with others. This, my friends, is called life in balance. I found myself expanding my thinking of who I am, why I am here, who I spend my time with, meeting new people, seeing new places, experiencing things in life that one might consider to be a bit more daring.
I must say, in the past number of years since dad made his grand exit, I have made a number of grand appearances and for that I have a slew of fabulous memories. Now, I’m not saying that you have to jump out of planes, hang glide over jungles, whitewater class fives, dine with Amazonian natives in remote jungles, swim with sharks and rays miles off the shores of coral reefs, or ride in taxi cabs that require passengers to simply close their eyes to shut out the blur of high speed near miss collisions with horse drawn carts… all of which I am remarkably proud to say I have done. I’m simply saying that to dare to step away from the oversized security of the Lazy Boy lifestyle one dares to step across a threshold of life in which they will likely never return.
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Taking an adventure to a distant place, far from the reaches of the comfort zone brings reality to a boiling point and upon those bubbles we find our true selves. We discover the diversity of the place we call home. And thus, we remember how to live. Upon our return we discover that our world back home has not changed, but we have. We view things differently. We discover the weight we hold simply holds us to the ground. The beliefs we have constructed around our existence are simply walls that close us in. The fears we shackle to our wrists limit our mighty reach.
So, friends, release yourselves and accept this free ticket to ride your grandest ride and experience all that there is to experience in life. As the wise freemason, Franklin D. Roosevelt, once declared, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Then the man gave us Yellowstone, the world’s first National Park, and certainly not the last to be set aside since.
