Adventure = Deception

Adventure takes on a lot of different faces. It's that pull to the next horizon, it's that incessant tug to try something new. It manifests in different ways depending on the setting and the person.

Before I get too far, let me assure you that I'm well aware of the advancements we enjoy in our world as a result of someone's sense of adventure at some point. I'm not saying there's never a place for it.

What I am saying, is that adventure is often tied to our discontentment and can easily serve as an escape from our present situations and circumstances. It tends to be much easier to move on to something new than it is to deal with the problems we're currently surrounded by. It's like buying a new car when the lack of maintenance on your current car finally catches up to it.

The reason I say adventure is deception, is because that shiny new thing we set out to discover (or acquire) will eventually become the current circumstance that we would like to escape from.

In other words, today's promising future will become tomorrow's mundane reality if we never learn to deal with the here and now.

Shopping is fueled by this. Marriages are (frequently) destroyed by it. Skills and talents go undeveloped as a result of people moving on to something new when progressing to the next level of their craft proves difficult. Extreme sports are constantly pushing the envelope because we've gotten used to what formerly was extreme and it no longer gives us the adrenaline rush we're looking for. Even the craze of never ending home improvement is a direct result of this. Basically, we as humans seem to have no idea how to just BE IN THE PRESENT.

I realize that "being in the moment" is an old cliche, but the funny thing about cliche's is that they exist for a reason: they're usually true(!). When we don't learn to be in the moment, we'll constantly be looking to the next moment which, when reached, will become the current moment, from where we'll look to the next moment, and the cycle will repeat itself...endlessly if we let it. The habit of constantly looking to the future and a strong sense of adventure are one and the same in many ways.

Like adventure, the future can be a crafty deceiver. In some ways I would go so far as to say the future is a lie. ("It was a lie Steven..a lie!") We can certainly lie to ourselves (and others) about the future with far more ease than we can lie about the present, because the present is right here, right now, and the future doesn't even exist yet. Everything in the future is technically still hypothetical, making it literally impossible to fact check it from here.

As I said earlier, I'm well aware of the benefits of a healthy sense adventure, just as I'm aware of a healthy consideration of the future. Like most things though, doing either one well will take a lot of intentionality, a steady hand on the steering wheel, and a willingness to constantly make the necessary adjustments.

For example, before you build a brand new living room, make sure you know how to really live in the one you already have.

Adventure and looking to the future should never come at the expense of what's right in front of our noses right now. This applies to everything from leadership (and the habit of raising up new leaders at the expense of current ones), to parenting, to running a business, to making lifestyle changes, and everything in between.

So, at the risk of sounding completely cliche...embrace whatever moment you're in right now and do the right thing with it!