Ask me how I’ll remember 2018 and I won’t say ‘typing words into a computer’, even though that’s how I spent far too much of almost every single day.
Not all of that typing was unmemorable, of course. Writing the second series of Foiled was fabulous and I’m sure I’ll be writing about how I believe in creativity soon.
But these are the memories that stand out most in my mind from this past year:
- Bothying in the snow-bound Cairngorms
- Travelling around Greece, meeting with refugees
- Cycling 1000 miles with Thighs of Steel
- Hiking in the Brecon Beacons
In a word: adventures.
Adventure is a big word, of course. But the choice is deliberate.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, adventure is:
- A course of action which invites risk
- A perilous or audacious undertaking the outcome of which is unknown
- A daring feat or exploit
- A remarkable or unexpected event, or series of events, in which a person participates as a result of chance
- A novel or exciting experience
Personally, I like the roguish simplicity of this definition: A wild and exciting undertaking (not necessarily lawful).
But who defines risk, peril, audacity, daring, expectation, novelty and excitement? We do. Adventure is relative and I’m claiming it for myself.
The events that are most memorable from my year are the adventures, those moments when I made an audacious move to go beyond the limits of my comfort, surrendered to novelty, and invited risk and chance.
But there is nothing in any of those definitions that limits moments of adventure to epic bike tours through foreign lands, climbing mountains and sleeping in cold huts.
So this year’s adventures also include meeting my new niece, a family reunion, applying for a job, learning how to throw a Frisbee, talking to people in saunas, and breathing deeply.
Audacity, daring, novelty and wild excitement are opportunities we can dig up anywhere, at any moment. At any moment, we can stretch out our lives like vellum and print them with memories of adventure.
Do you not feel like you live an adventurous life? Are you sure? Don’t you ever feel challenged? Don’t you ever worry that things won’t turn out, and thrill when they do? Don’t you ever see things you’ve never seen before, or talk to unexpected strangers?
Well, go on then, here, take this word – adventure!
Adventure isn’t only for polar explorers and hitmen. We can have it for ourselves.
Further Adventures
- Professional adventurer Alastair Humphreys reading Seneca Letter 28: On travel as a cure for discontent. A beautiful reading, set to a beautiful video. ‘Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.’
- The Most Interesting Country in the World: Part 1 (10 minute read) ‘At home, our comfort zone is vast, like a great big sofa, sucking us in to watch endless re-runs of Miss Marple, where the Toff murderer always gets his or her comeuppance and order is restored in the form of a pillow-dribble nap.’
- What Makes a Person Do a Thing? (12 minute read) ‘It seems extraordinary, but we do get scared of our power, we do fear our greatness; we sometimes feel like we don’t deserve such responsibility, or we feel like imposters when we do presume to act.’