Today, I want to go on an adventure. I want to ride a flying bison. I want to meet new, interesting people, and learn new things. I want to join a noble, important, world-and-life-changing quest. I want to travel through strange terrain, over towering mountains, through exotic forests, and across shimmering rivers. I want danger and excitement. I want to learn how to fight (when the need is called for) - preferably with a bow and arrow or a magic staff. I want to walk with fauns and elves, learn spells from a good wizard, ride dragons, and study the art of bending. I want to learn how to fly, to be weightless, to soar high above the earth and feel the fresh wind in my face.
I've heard that life is a grand adventure, but it really doesn't feel like it. Most of my courageous acts do not involve conquering giants or evil masterminds, but simply opening up to people or trying new things. Instead of a pirate ship, I have a falling-apart truck. Instead of an exciting adventure involving time travel, spies, and awesome ninja skills, I have college, work, and piles upon piles of paperwork and stress in my future. Instead of going through harrowing, life-changing, exciting adventures with somebody and falling in love because you've work, bled, cried, laughed, and saved the world together, I have to... well, date. Y'know, dinner, chit-chat, texting, sitting next to each other, holding hands.
Now, I know part of me is being a little stubborn and that adventure can be found in life's most mundane things, whether it's teaching or dating or driving a truck. Heck, just look at the Disney-Pixar movie Up! There's this girl who long for adventure, to go to Paradise Falls and explore the world like her hero, Charles Muntz. She even has a "Adventure Book" to record all the adventures she knows she's going to have one day. But Ellie never gets to go. She settles down with Carl, spends her days working at a zoo and sitting next to her husband in their armchairs, experiencing life's little blessings and sorrows. She eventually dies without fulfilling her dream of visiting South America. But when her husband eventually opens her "Adventure Book," he is shocked. He sees pictures of their wedding, pictures of their life together. Ellie learned that life - ordinary, mundane life, is the greatest adventure of all. And that's something that's always stuck with me. But, I suppose I'm just feeling rather Tookish. Like J.R.R. Tolkein wrote about Bilbo in The Hobbit, "Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking stick." I want to run off to Narnia, Neverland, Middle Earth, Space, and the Avatar world. Unfortunately, I can't really do that, because most of those places don't exist, and I'm pretty sure that space is pretty inaccessible. The closest I can get to such places is through words and imagination, which, I suspect, I'll have to settle for for now. And I know, without a doubt, that the life God has planned for me will be perfect, filled with everyday magic and adventure, if I just take the time to look.
~"Pursue a righteous life - a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, courtesy. Run hard and fast in the faith. Sieze the eternal life, the life you were called to, the life you so fervently embraced in the presence of so many witnesses." -I Timothy 6:11-12~
No comments:
Post a Comment