Monday, January 12, 2009

Choose Your Own Adventure
My friend Mushroom over at Fungle Jungle has a good series on "How to Be Adventurous".

After the epiphany of the car wreck, I revved up the interior adventure I had already been on most of my life. A big part of that was a new commitment to being true to oneself.
Now, that can be carried to extremes of selfishness- we've all seen the examples- but in this case, it was mostly a matter of weighing societal expectations and seeing if they applied or not.

For example: retirees are supposed to travel. But I've realized that I don't much like to travel. At this point, I've alread seen mountains, the ocean, the desert, a glacier, geological formations, and Aztec pyramids.
I don't fly, except in cases of emergency. (It's a physics thing.)
I have no desire to go spend money in countries whose citizens despise/resent me.
So, no cruises or tours for me.
That sort of thing.
I think some of this comes from having been one of the lucky ones who found and were able to live their vocation- with all its depths and heights. I didn't spend years at a job I disliked waiting to be freed from it to do what I wanted. I don't have a lot of things on a 'bucket list'. My later part of life request is frankly "More of the same, please. But with some leisure added in, thank you. We're not as young as we used to be."
The inner adventure casts even the most mundane in an enhanced light. I myself don't need to go look at birds of paradise in the Amazon. There's a ruby-crowned kinglet, as delicate and charming as a Tasha Tudor drawing, right outside my window.

4 comments:

mushroom said...

Hey, cool.

Interior adventure -- I like that. I remember in old movies and books about adventurers or explorers the phrase "going into the interior" was often used.

Most of the world's population -- I forget the percentage, but it's overwhelming -- live within a fairly short distance of the coast. I imagine that's literal and figurative. Most of us are live on the exterior, sticking close to the coast. After all a trip to the interior almost always involves running into those dangerous, unpredictable aboriginals.

Sal said...

This is why I like the Work of Byron Katie- it's a process by which you can determine if it's a real aboriginal, or a straw man.
The energy savings in not fighting phantoms is enormous.

QP said...

AMEN sister-under-the-pelt and you said so well.

QP said...

said ^ IT so well.