Adventure doesn’t have to be an epic quest across middle earth to cast the ring that controls them all into the fires of Mount doom, nor does it need to involve being chased down a slight incline by an uncannily smooth spherical rock whilst protecting archaeological treasures. An adventure is anything that gets your heart racing, your spirits elevated and stirs a sense of courage within you, you didn’t know you had.
Adventure is defined by the Merriam-Webster as “an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks” but is adventure constrained to danger? Risks? Or can it be a mindset in which a person is willing to take on obstacles not because they pose a threat but because they seek experience. Traditionally an adventurous person is conceived to be a person who rock climbs, para-sails and sky dives or a young athletic naturist seeking the splendors of the world.
However, when I think of adventurers I think of my grandparents, watching lions on a safari in Africa, navigating the streets of Cairo, walking atop the Great Wall of China, exploring the North Shore of Lake Superior, touring Europe and so much more.
Adventure is simply doing something you have never done before, going somewhere you have never been before. And for some an adventure is simply life—getting up in the morning.
Adventures come to us everyday but often people fail to recognize it as such. Going out to eat, trying something new, meeting new people, thinking about things in a new way; the key word here is new.
Shopping for antiques is an adventure in itself for there’s something exciting and enchanting about walking through aisles upon aisles of old artifacts, some valuable and others of little significance at all. Stumbling across that one object that just fits the bill is like discovering buried treasure.
There is no doubt adventure applies to life in a broader sense than what it is commonly conceived as. To me adventure is an opportunity I can choose to take every morning I wake up providing I seek to experience more, live more and widen the horizons of what I consider my world. Adventures are as big or small as you want.
“Adventure is the way you look at life—when you are living to the fullest, paying attention, loving others even when they do not know what love is and when your heart is so full of emotion as you experience nature, a scientific experiment, a mathematical equation or whatever you are focused on – that is Adventure and you are living it right now,” said Carmen Rodriguez-Brick ECE’87 alum.