A life full of adventure
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
3 of 3 free articles.
When we were kids, my mom used to get us lost.
A lot.
Whenever we were going somewhere new or unfamiliar, there was a one in three chance that we’d miss the turnpike and end up several miles out of our way in a city we’d never seen. Now, most parents would get angry, frustrated and start cussing under their breath.
I both loved and hated getting lost with a friend’s family. I loved it because I learned new cuss words. I hated it because my friend’s families didn’t know how to get lost.
But mine did.
Whenever my sisters and I looked around at where we were and realized that “where we were” was no where close to “where we wanted to be,” we’d ask, “Mom, are we lost?”
Her response never failed to put a smile on our faces.
“Nope!” she’d cheerfully shout over the Lynyrd Skynyrd CD blaring from the minivan speakers, “Of course we’re not lost ... we’re on an adventure!”
Then she’d laugh, smile and punch the accelerator while singing “Sweet Home Alabama” at the top of her voice.
I don’t know if she intended for this to be as life-changing as it was for me, but I haven’t been lost since I was 5 years old — and I’m not just talking about being lost on the freeway.
I’ve lived through some pretty trying times. I was once so broke I couldn’t afford groceries, so I lived for two weeks on a pile of canned tuna I’d found under the sink of the apartment when I moved in. By the end of the second week I’d lost 25 pounds and was sweating Omega-3 fatty acids which, healthy as they may be, smell a lot like stale fish. It was a lonely two weeks.
Last year I worked for three days straight without sleep — and it wasn’t a desk job, either. Seventy-two hours of nothing but backbreaking, man-making, incredibly physical labor. When I finally got home, my system too upside-down to sleep, I just sat on my back porch and watched the moon rise. When the moon finally came up and the sky cleared, I started hallucinating.
And I have to say, it was pretty awesome.
The rocking chair in the neighbors yard became a frantic Amish woman holding a loaf of bread. She kept pointing at me and mouthing words, but I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying. The red horse barn across the street became Clifford the Big Red Dog. He was digging furiously for what I imagined to be the world’s largest chew toy.
I knew none of it was real, but since I had never tried any kind of psychotropic drug I was really interested in the proceedings. I just sat there and watched the show. I think I finally decided I’d had enough and went to bed when the sugarplum fairies and hobbits started brawling across the street.
But I’ve never been lost. Even in the really bad times when I don’t have a friend to call or a dollar in my pocket, I’ve never been lost. Instead, I’ve simply had a lot of adventures and, in the process, learned about myself and the world around me.
Isn’t that a better way to look at your problems and trials and tribulations? What if, instead of having a massive, ever-mounting stack of tunnels with no visible light at the end, you just had adventures you hadn’t completed yet?
I hope it doesn’t sound too childish or naive, but that’s how I try to look at my problems and my life. I don’t have much of anything, and I know better than to be proud of my possessions. Instead, I have my mind and the state it’s in and, thankfully, both of those things are forever and always within my scope of control.
Here’s to the adventure, my friends. Best of luck on yours and remember: just like happiness, being lost is simply a matter of perspective.
Your perspective will always be yours to control.
