Adventuring Spirit

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.
Henry David Thoreau


Years ago I watched the movie "Into the Wild" and quickly dismissed reading the book thinking Christopher McCandless to be crazy. I only read the book by Jon Krakauer after much convincing of a friend (is this book recommended because I am seen as crazy?). The book is more than the story of one man lost in his adventure, it is a story anaylizing the adventuring spirit. The thing that made Chrisopher McCandless seem crazy is that his adventure ended in death, while sometimes those that live after an adventure are deemed as heroes. And these stories are important because they make us think and remind us about what is important.

Life today is so easy. Yet we must have adventuring programmed into our DNA. Years past we needed to have a desire for adventure in order to survive. Life was an adventure. The need for food and shelter, for finding and protecting a family all involved adventure. Today we call dominoes and find mates at match.com. Yet we still have the desire for adventure. Adventuring today is found in sports, in entrepreneurship, and in travel... are not people who climb the tallest mountains, risk financial ruin, or travel to remote and dangerous locals crazy? Or are the crazy ones those we find adventuring in darker places such as crime and drugs.

What struck me most in this book is when Kraukauer talked about how youth think they have a God given right to accomplish whatever it is they want to accomplish. I see this every day with the teens I work with. Every teen is invincible, every teen has the world at their feet. They do not see the perils, they do not see the consequences, they do not imagine the pain they might cause others, they do not doubt for a moment that they will not come home from their adventure. Let us all have adventures, but let them be adventures that build character, that let us become our own heroes.