Choose your own adventure
As some of you know, I have a son. I call him The Boych—short for Boychik, a Yiddish term of endearment for a young boy or young man. I raised him to Be brave and fly little birdie. Funny thing: He actually listened.
When he was six, we papered a wall-sized world map over his bed. Every night, we lay on our backs and imagined ourselves in faraway places. By the time he was nine, he planned armchair vacations for us using a play-money budget, and at 12 he went to flight camp. When he was 14, he joined the online crowdsourcing search party, to look for parts of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which had disappeared 38 minutes after takeoff, presumably over the South China Sea. Every day was an adventure in parenting!
Now, my Boych is 24 and I’ve dropped him at the airport. He’s off to Australia, and Singapore, and Honk Kong after that. Or maybe I’ve got the order wrong, which is entirely possible because he knows flight routes and global geography far better than I do. I’m still pretty adventurous, but after decades of wanderlust and a respectable amount of global travel, I feel only a wee bit of FOMO.
That’s disconcerting! Now that I have a real travel budget and a gazillion Chase miles, why do I hesitate to hop on a plane? When my Boych invites me to tag along, why do I demur?
Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure book series? As the story unfolds, young readers make choices for the characters. There are many possible paths and endings, so if by page 20, the protagonist is dead, the reader can go back to the beginning and choose a different path.
Life isn’t exactly like that. We can’t go back for a re-do, but we can still create our own adventures. Here’s how.
First step: Define (or re-define) the concept. If you’re like me, it’s hard to veer from what we know. Based on habit or history, the scope and scale of our world seem fixed. So I’m trying to think in new ways about what constitutes an adventure. Can it be plotting a new route on foot or on my bike? Or reaching out to make a new friend? I just read a novel about a girl who rides around on the Paris Metro giving away books. I felt like I was there.
Step two: Re-consider what matters now. I’ve never actually had a bucket list, but many people do. If looking at your old list makes your feel like you’re staring into a closet full of clothes that no longer fit you, maybe it’s time to build a new adventure wardrobe. Or not. Instead of making list of the places you want to go, maybe make a list of the things you really care about now. Pursuing those things might take you outside yourself.
Step three: Quit comparing! When I see friends on Favcebook sailing in Croatia, or eating street food in Saigon, I feel so set in my ways. All I seem to do is drive back and forth to visit my Mountain Mensch. Or I take my van to a certain beach town in California, where I rent and Air BnB. But who’s to say a cold plunge in the Pacific isn’t an adventure. Or that learning to love isn’t making me brave.
I guess the bottom line is that we get to decide for ourselves. What, for each of us, is boring? And—at the other extreme—what creates so much anxiety that we can’t get out of bed. Somewhere in the middle is where we find flow.
In that flow state, we feel free. And brave.
We take somewhat uncomfortable risks
We get off our asses and go someplace new.
