1) Adults are often ashamed to be novices
As adults, we rarely learn fresh skills or dare ourselves to change direction. We urge our children to be bold risk-takers, to show grit and open themselves to new experiences. But us grown-ups? We hide behind the way we’ve always done things. We become so boring! Adults are ashamed to be novices, and so we shy away from it. We draw comfort from being competent, even in narrow and unchanging niches. So we plateau and settle for the identity we have. We don’t stretch ourselves because that risks failure and pain. In fact, it guarantees it, for the pain of being stretched is how we grow. You are vulnerable when you begin something new because you are exposing your weaknesses.
2) The grandest adventures can start with the smallest decisions
Every journey, every change in direction, begins with one tiny deed, quick to revoke and easy to forget. An action so devoid of binding consequence that there is no reason not to take it. No reason except inertia and fear. The hardest part of every adventure is this one moment, small yet significant.
3) Adventure is about embracing a kind of uncertainty
Adventure entails taking on things that scare you, risking failure and pain in pursuit of fulfillment. One reason I gravitated towards physical challenges in remote environments was to make me uncomfortable and fill me with doubt. You put a little grit into the oyster if you want a pearl. But the more expeditions I went on, the more competent I became. My life of calculated risk began to lose the jolt of surprise that adventures were supposed to provide. This is the timeless addict’s problem, the slippery slope towards bigger doses and greater risks. I could keep doing the same stuff, but higher, further, faster – pushing my limits, pushing my luck – or else something needed to change. Centuries ago, the word ‘adventure’ meant ‘to risk the loss of something’, ‘perilous undertakings’ and ‘a trial of one’s chances’. An adventurer was ‘one who plays at games of chance’. If I wanted to keep living adventurously, I had to veer from what I was good at and search again for uncertainty. Could something as gentle as learning a musical instrument count as adventure? I was beginning to think it might. The idea of busking terrified me. It was filled with risk, vulnerability, fear of failure and excitement. That was precisely what I wanted from adventure!
4) Use the hours, don’t count them
I wanted to learn – somewhat late – to enjoy today more than the thought of yesterday or tomorrow. It was time to recalibrate, to savor all I had rather than mourning what was missing. Satisfaction comes, literally, from appreciating that you have enough. Use the hours, don’t count them.
5) Walking connects you to an older way of being
It is important on a journey to grind out these slow, unremarkable miles. They heft you to the landscape and the moods of future joys, the hardship building the soundtrack to your unique journey and the new poetry of your life. I appreciated the slowness of walking in a fast world. It is the ancient way of travel, and even technology cannot help. Only persistence and effort make an impact. It is easy to begin but hard to stick at, which is why I respect anyone who has completed a long hike.
6) Time moves differently on the road
Time moves strangely on the road: at once fast and slow. There is real time, told by tolling church towers and the sun’s relentless sweep. But there is also walking time, marked by the body and mind – tortured soles and souls – that pays scant heed to the chronological order of the universe. …This is just one day of my life. But every day to come will depend fractionally on what I do today. I must live it as vividly as I can bear to do.
7) Being outdoors puts you at peace with the indoor world
It is normal nowadays to spend most of our lives inside, temperature-controlled, light-switched, water-softened, air-freshened and double-glazed. We have become like babies in incubators, unable to survive in the world. I only sense the sterility of this when my situation is reversed and I spend so much time outside that going in feels strange once more. I am more at peace with myself and the world when I spend an extended period outdoors.
8) Aloneness is a rare commodity these days
Aloneness is a rare commodity these days. Even the small act of turning off your phone is inconceivable for most working people. We are never disconnected. Most of humanity lives squashed together in cities. You can be lonely in a city, but you cannot be alone. You can be lonely in a family, too, though with children you are rarely by yourself. The fine line between loneliness and solitude depends upon your state of mind. Some days it seems glorious to follow my own path. Other days it is overwhelmingly sad to walk among streets filled with strangers. But being alone in a landscape rarely feels like emptiness or loss for me. Rather, the solitude is a physical presence that restores me like a long sleep. I can then go back to the family fray better equipped to give of myself.
9) Being curious is more essential than being remarkable
I now believe there is something even more important than striving for the remarkable. And that is to stop dreaming about an ‘adventure of a lifetime’, and instead pursue a lifetime of living adventurously through a daily pledge to push myself a little, scare myself now and then, and remain curious.
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