Oh, how I long for some adventure!

The world is boring...bring on the action!

(March 14th, 2008 / 4 comments)

I read a book when I was a child about a colonial girl who was kidnapped by indians...and I became insanely jealous.

I wanted to be kidnapped

I wanted to be dragged through the wilderness, forced to learn a new culture and language out of pure necessity, neck-deep in a struggle to understand the foreign surroundings I found myself thrown into. I wanted to wake from every dream of home to the horrifying reality that I wasn't there anymore.

I wanted to be the natives the girl learned to live with and become a part of. I wanted to stalk through the forest, keenly aware that every snapping twig or fluttering leaf could either be my next meal or the last thing I ever heard.

I wanted to stand on the edge of a clearing, hidden in the foliage, and watch the white man's axe, saw and hoe slowly creep deeper into my land, destroying the very thing that had brought me life for centuries.

I wanted to wage war, bloody and terrible, forced to put survival above all temporary comfort. I wanted to run through the trees directly into the midst of my strange enemies, bullets whizzing past my face and through my hair as my war cry clashed against the sound of exploding gunpowder.

The action is missing

The urge to live out these adventures was incredible. I almost felt as if I was missing them in the way you miss a loved one - like they had been taken away from me at some point, leaving an adventure-shaped hole in my heart. It felt lonely and sad.

I would sneak into the woods behind the house, just far enough that no one could see me, and strip down to just my shorts. Taking a deep breath, I would draw in the scent of the rain-soaked wood and dirt and begin to run as fast as I could. I didn't care about where I was headed or the twigs and rocks that my bare feet pounded into with every step. I didn't even care about why I was running.

I only cared about feeling like I was somewhere I wasn't - someone I wasn't. I was not the awkward white boy who lived in the house in the park and doodled on paper all day. I was not a buck-toothed kid watching Duck Tales and eating Lucky Charms.

I was an Iroquois brave. I was a warrior. I was a prisoner. I was pumping with adrenaline and purpose.

Escape or boredom?

It wasn't that I disliked my life in any way. I was happy with my life, in fact. I wasn't running away from who I was or where I lived - I was just taking a break from them.

I wanted an adventure - the kinds I read about in books - but there were none to be had in my 11-year-old world. In fact, nothing seemed to be able to compare with the life-or-death struggles I read about so often. I wanted a heightened sense of what's truly important - the kind of insight you get only when you're faced with something so huge that it causes you to forget about everything else.

Where's the adventure?

Today, I still long to be kidnapped - to be at war - to experience something dramatic.

Modern life feels so white-washed and boring sometimes. Our main concerns are getting to work on time and making enough money to buy the kinds of groceries and toys we want. It's the doodles and Duck Tales of my adult life that leave me often with the feeling that something's missing.

I want something to happen that makes my mortgage payment unnecessary and insignificant - something that makes us all forget about the price of oil, because we're too busy running for our lives and no one's there to sell it to us anyways - something that makes our currency worthless, because it doesn't burn well enough to keep anyone warm when winter comes and the wolves are on the prowl.

Again, I don't want to escape the responsibilities I have or the life I live. I'm just still waiting for that adventure.

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