Thoughts on Adventures
Year twenty-six is halfway over. I was somewhat wary about turning twenty-six because it means I have gone past the halfway point of my twenties and, if how fast the last four years went by were any indication, thirty will be here in no time. Thirty, when Real Adulthood is supposed to begin, and with that Real Commitments and Responsibilities like marriage and babies and 9-5 jobs and houses with mortgages and staying in one place for more than a year or so at a time. I feel like my youth is slipping away from me, and with that I'm running out of time to have all those grand adventures that are inconvenient when such things as mortgages and grown-up careers are present. Wasn't I supposed to have jumped out of an airplane, backpacked across Europe, or lived in a hut in a third world country by now?
Setting aside for the moment that age is just a number, and I can make stupid and dangerous choices and avoid responsibility for as long as a damn well please thankyouverymuch, and also that there is no one way to be a Real Adult when I do decide I'm ready for that, nor one way to be a young adult in the meantime (do I even want to jump out of an airplane? Yeah, hell no...just going on big rollercoasters makes me puke). As true and important to remember as all of these things are, it's not really what this particular entry is about.
I was in the neighborhood of my first apartment today, so I decided to take a walk down memory lane. I walked past the apartment, the neighborhood church and library and bike shop, and across the bridge with a spectacular view of the Boston skyline where I would often stand and just gaze and let my thoughts wander. Sometimes, if I had a really bad day and nobody was around (a frequent occurence in the bitter cold of a New England winter), I'd scream at the top of my lungs into the distance off that bridge, and it was the most freeing and cathartic feeling in the world. The walk continued, amongst the tattood college students and recent grads carrying guitars or paintings or cigarretes or lattes, past the furniture store that declared its wares to be "cheaper than you", next to the New Age store and acupuncturist and old-fashioned barber shop that also sells Halloween costumes. Down the busy four-lane Commonwealth Avenue to my second apartment, "the Commune" or "Byzantine Forest", where I lived with between eight and eleven people and two cats.
Looking back on my twenties (and late teens, the time since I moved out of my childhood home) thus far, I realize that I essentially have had the quintessential young adult experience already. I attended four-year colleges where I lived in dorms and ate in the cafeteria and joined clubs. I've moved frequently, lived in shabby apartments with many and varied roommates, fallen in and out of love, broken hearts and had my heart broken. I have a patchwork quilt resume. I've gone on spontaneous road trips, and stayed up all night dancing the night away or connecting deeply with someone over conversation or just gazing at the sky.
I am thankful for all these experiences in retrospect, but at the time of what I would now call the best moments of my life, I often just wanted it to be over and was actively plotting a next step. Why? Because adventure is hard. Adventure is that which pushes you to your limit and beyond, to the point where you become a different (better) person because of it. It wouldn't be adventure if it didn't take you at least a bit out of your comfort zone. And for really good, amazing moments and experiences to happen, you have to also be open to having really bad things happen.
If I got to do my twenties over, I probably wouldn't change my actions, but I would enjoy it more. I'd feel thankful not only for the moments of joy or peace, but also for the moments of challenge and frustration and confusion, for it is in these moments that I am truly alive and growing. I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking forward to a perfect time that will never come, but feeling bored and understimulated when occasional glimpses of seeming perfection do come into my life. I don't want to only feel happy with any experience after it is over or before it has happened. I can be happy now, and live in and for now.
I can't turn back time. But thankfully, it's never too late.
Setting aside for the moment that age is just a number, and I can make stupid and dangerous choices and avoid responsibility for as long as a damn well please thankyouverymuch, and also that there is no one way to be a Real Adult when I do decide I'm ready for that, nor one way to be a young adult in the meantime (do I even want to jump out of an airplane? Yeah, hell no...just going on big rollercoasters makes me puke). As true and important to remember as all of these things are, it's not really what this particular entry is about.
I was in the neighborhood of my first apartment today, so I decided to take a walk down memory lane. I walked past the apartment, the neighborhood church and library and bike shop, and across the bridge with a spectacular view of the Boston skyline where I would often stand and just gaze and let my thoughts wander. Sometimes, if I had a really bad day and nobody was around (a frequent occurence in the bitter cold of a New England winter), I'd scream at the top of my lungs into the distance off that bridge, and it was the most freeing and cathartic feeling in the world. The walk continued, amongst the tattood college students and recent grads carrying guitars or paintings or cigarretes or lattes, past the furniture store that declared its wares to be "cheaper than you", next to the New Age store and acupuncturist and old-fashioned barber shop that also sells Halloween costumes. Down the busy four-lane Commonwealth Avenue to my second apartment, "the Commune" or "Byzantine Forest", where I lived with between eight and eleven people and two cats.
Looking back on my twenties (and late teens, the time since I moved out of my childhood home) thus far, I realize that I essentially have had the quintessential young adult experience already. I attended four-year colleges where I lived in dorms and ate in the cafeteria and joined clubs. I've moved frequently, lived in shabby apartments with many and varied roommates, fallen in and out of love, broken hearts and had my heart broken. I have a patchwork quilt resume. I've gone on spontaneous road trips, and stayed up all night dancing the night away or connecting deeply with someone over conversation or just gazing at the sky.
I am thankful for all these experiences in retrospect, but at the time of what I would now call the best moments of my life, I often just wanted it to be over and was actively plotting a next step. Why? Because adventure is hard. Adventure is that which pushes you to your limit and beyond, to the point where you become a different (better) person because of it. It wouldn't be adventure if it didn't take you at least a bit out of your comfort zone. And for really good, amazing moments and experiences to happen, you have to also be open to having really bad things happen.
If I got to do my twenties over, I probably wouldn't change my actions, but I would enjoy it more. I'd feel thankful not only for the moments of joy or peace, but also for the moments of challenge and frustration and confusion, for it is in these moments that I am truly alive and growing. I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking forward to a perfect time that will never come, but feeling bored and understimulated when occasional glimpses of seeming perfection do come into my life. I don't want to only feel happy with any experience after it is over or before it has happened. I can be happy now, and live in and for now.
I can't turn back time. But thankfully, it's never too late.