Consider Life an Adventure

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” ― G.K. Chesterton

Admittedly, I’m tired writing this. Two weeks of travel and burning the candle at both ends and I’m worn out. But that’s why we dance with coffee, isn’t it? To press ahead just a bit further.

The thing is, we’ve had a couple of years to reset. We all did the best we could under the circumstances. Getting back to whatever this normal is gives us a chance to stretch our imagination more. To find new adventures just around the corner, and to have the gumption to venture much farther. Not to fill our InstaGram feed or gain subscribers, but to shake loose of the cobwebs of the commonplace and experience the world.

“Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” — Henry David Thoreau

Who ever looks back with pride on a moment when you decided to sleep in instead of dancing with adventure? We ought to consider life an adventure and do more with that notion. We ought to rise and seek more from our days, for we only have so many to work with. We’ve spent time with people on their deathbed who literally can’t go outside to see the stars, who are we to complain about stepping out into the world? Dance with the gift of freedom. Be part of something livelier.

“Who can guess the luna’s sadness who lives so briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone longing to be ground down, to be part again of something livelier? Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity?
Strange questions, yet I have spent worthwhile time with them. And I suggest them to you also, that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained— are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.” — Mary Oliver, The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers

We all have our shackles of responsibility and routine. We can bend our days to find adventure while still honoring our core responsibilities. And we should question our routines when they hold our rambunctious spirit in place. Consider, for a moment, that convenience is a shackle disguised as a mindset.