Adventure.
The beauty of adventuring is being able to step into the world of the unknown and embracing your inner child. Whether that be a new restaurant, a new country, a new hobby, etc. An adventure should be viewed as an opportunity for discovery. Sometimes it can be as simple as refining your interests, or trekking on the road less travelled.
The recipe for a good adventure has a couple of essentials. The first being an open mind. A great adventure starts with learning how to navigate the world with your unique individualism and allow yourself the freedom to feel like a child. The more you’re able to set your opinions (conditioned-self) aside, the more you’re able to experience the world from multiple perspectives. Whether it be that rude waiter at the restaurant, or the amazing (but scary) Angels Landing hike. Everyone is an individual yes, but with an open mind you start to understand that everything is connected. From the plants to the bugs to the rude waiter at that restaurant, they all make up your view of the world as an individual. These experiences teach you micro lessons that lead your overall outlook on life. It all starts with opening up the mind, allowing it the freedom to embrace all that is and ever was.
The second is being okay with change. A great example I have of this was our recent trip up to Big Sur. My friends were in town and we all decided it would be fun to go hunting for jade. Big Sur is the only known underwater deposit of its kind, and if you’re lucky you can find some really nice pieces on the beach. Finding jade is like finding your lost wallet in the house. You know it’s there if you look for long enough, but there is a chance you won’t find it at all. Going into the experience, it’s overwhelming because you’ll pick up a hundred stones and convince yourself one of them is jade. The chances are, it’s not, and you have to be okay with that. The reason change is nice, is because you have to dissolve expectations. Leading you to be okay with walking away from the beach with absolutely nothing in hand. While in Big Sur, Brooke (my girlfriend) was crouched down, looked at a stone and said “I want to turn that one over and I don’t really know why.” Proceeds to turn the stone to find a tiny piece of jade All of us got a bit excited because we were the people picking up the hundreds of “Is this jade?” stones without any luck. It meant that the rumors were true, and we all now had a bit more hope there were more. Brooke in her la di da demeanor (will keep any rock on the beach because it looks cool) then proceeds to find a handful more, while a few of us walk away empty handed. It didn’t take away from the experience at all that we didn’t find anything, it reinforced the idea that the more you’re okay with change, the less tied up you are to the outcome.
The last key to a good adventure is to trust your gut. A lot of the time while adventuring, your intuition will creep into the back of your mind and lightly direct your decision making. The worst feeling is walking away from a situation or something you thought would be fun, feeling like you either didn’t do enough or should’ve done something different. If you aren’t feeling it, it’s probably for a reason. The beauty of a great adventure is that the more you develop a taste for what it is that you like to do, the easier it is to weed out the stuff you don’t. Whether that be surrounding yourself with the right people, spending less money for better service and food quantity/quality or investing your time going to a concert to see a band you actually know the lyrics to. I tend to be a bit more of a yes man, which has led me to some of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. Being able to try new things has opened the doors for me to experience more of the world than I could’ve ever imagined. My attitude towards most things is mostly optimistic, and I genuinely believe it’s because I’ve been able to rely on the gut feelings I get from my adventures.
Hope you get to go on an epic adventure soon.
Thanks for reading.
With love, Kai
Weekly Poem:
Dance with the wind
Fly with your mind
Embrace with your heart
Trust with your gut
The recipe for an amazing adventure
