Ride That Adventure For All It’s Worth
Literally nothing that you apply to anything will leave the applied object unaltered. Sometimes the effect is minute ( a tiny shift in flight pattern from a bend in a boomerang), massive (car meet telephone pole; pole, car), or even microscopic (the increase in mitochondria in muscle cells exposed to CrossFit). These are only the more obvious changes that we can see.
What is important to remember, and what bears reflection in the contemplation, is how an experience will alter you as a person. The same magnitudes exist, but one must be ever conscious of the absolute fact that every experience will alter you in some way. We can dive into the neuropsychology of it all, the effect on neural pathways and whatnot, but that’s probably not necessary; you can simply take my word for it.
Experiences will change you, and the more momentous the experience the more change you must prepare for.
Some of this is pretty basic stuff. School, job, marriage…no revelations in there at all. What never fails to surprise though is when an adventure, something out of the regular and routine, upsets the applecart. This is not always a bad thing of course, and whatever alteration is induced by the adventure is just as likely to be really good as it is to be anything else. No, what surprises anyone who has been paying just the littlest bit of attention is that the adventurer is surprised that they’ve been altered!
There’s a really cool guy in our CrossFit world who is on an epic adventure. Roughly 1/3 of the way into it he’s had a little epiphany: he misses his people, but he doesn’t really miss the life he’s left behind. In truth I have no idea whether or not this is a surprise to him, though his penchant for seeking adventures and his serial reinvention of his life makes me think he is more curious to have discovered this particular alteration than he is surprised by it. Indeed, anyone who embarks on the type of adventures that he has had can only fail to be altered if they aren’t paying even the slightest attention.
My bid is that seeking adventure and all that it entails is beneficial. One needs to be aware that the adventure will alter you in some way, and this is probably part of the calculus you need to perform in planning the adventure. But still, seeking out experiences that cannot help but alter you has got to be necessary, don’t you think? Learn and play new games, after all. As long as you’re at it, you might just as well make each adventure as big as you can fit into your life. Who knows how many chances you’ll get to be in that saddle, or when the next one might arrive.
When you do get in the saddle, make sure you wear spurs!
This entry was posted on Monday, September 16th, 2013 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Crossfit, Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.