I scrolled through hazy pictures, grainy with the heat of adventure and youth, and felt that same dull prod of jealousy that often appears when observing the lives of my peers through the small lens of that app.
My idea of the word Adventure has been under most strenuous interrogation this past year. I thought as a late-twenty-something year old that the definition lay in the very obvious physical sense of exploration – the one constantly tugging at me, pulling my mind from country to country, allowing me to roam freely, to taste new cultures, to converse with strangers, to know the earth and its fullness and all that wonderful, thrilling, romantic stuff. ‘Adventure’ had at some point been sold to me as a specific type of youth, entwined with an even more specific kind of freedom, and I happily bought it all up.
This has been a hard & dear purchase to return - I’m not even sure I kept the receipts. My life, as you may know, is not very typical of the average late-twenty-something year old. I have a son, a beautiful and curious and determined little boy who wants to see all of the world just like his mama. I have a husband, a house, a new job (finally!), and a something I can barely call a small business— essentially, I’ve a boatful of responsibility that keeps me bobbing precariously along from day to day. And yet this tugging to drop it all, run away to see the world, persists. The two halves of who I am at this time in my life - young but also older - are at odds and cannot realistically meet. However much my outside life looks like I have it all and all my proverbial shit is together, the truth is I’m still like every other youthful person who craves a sense of transient chaos and wondrous novelty which my current existence could not seem further from. I have had to uproot much in order to find my small sense of adventure in the cracks and crevices of this everyday life. And I really wasn’t expecting how equally painful & thrilling it would be.
I hate cliches but I do have to say it: this year has been the greatest adventure of my life in absolutely none of the ways I expected. That chaos and novelty I craved? Oh you bet i got that in spades with a newborn who's somehow turning one in a few months… But while I scroll through friends & acquaintances living it up abroad or out for fancy meals (and frequently try to recreate that life within my small means), I’ve sat here far too often for my liking wondering if I should've just waited that little bit longer to fulfil this longing to be a mother and wife. This might all seem incredibly superficial and ungrateful of me, considering the immense blessings I am able to call mine, but it’s a truth I feel eludes careful inspection and conversation far too frequently… I want to pick away at this very specific idea of ‘living your best life’ while of a certain age. I want to throw it under my lamplight and reveal it to be actually a bit of a con, because in reality it’s just a new generation of keeping up with the Joneses wrapped up in the spirit of ‘youthful freedom’. I’m fully aware I’m not saying anything we don’t already know. But if you’re anything like me, no matter what side of the fence you may currently fall - young & carefree or mature & settled - there will probably always be some gnawing sensation reminding you of the other places you could be, of the other lives you could have. That feeling, my friend, is the biggest con of all. The grass is always greener. . right?
Another thing I’ve always hated hearing but have lived & muddled through this year in order to really grasp: you won’t appreciate anything you already have unless you sit down to look at all of it, the difficult and the exciting and the gruelling and the rewarding alike. That’s why I thought about listing all the ways I’ve come to appreciate my small adventures as a new mother, as someone opening herself up to the community & boundless opportunity right on her doorstep, all while letting go of (and indeed mourning) the Other Lives That Could Have Been. But even I’d eventually find that boring and trite. I’ve done my grumbling but I don’t think I’m here to preach or offer solutions. . I guess I just wanted to publicly acknowledge certain truths in the hopes that it might strike a familiar chord at this time in our lives.
I’m okay with wanting the more exciting and seemingly superficial things in life, and with wanting the humbling and deeply fulfilling family life I have too. I’m perfectly okay with sometimes not being bothered by the fact that I’m not living the life I’ve been prescribed by this youth- & ego-centric western society, and I’m also okay with sometimes finding the self-sacrificial and thankless life I am currently living too hard to muddle through. In short, it’s okay to want it all and want none of it at the same time. Ours is a complex age constantly caught at the apex of something new & shining ahead and also something very very old behind. We’re told to embrace it all as we step foot atop the summit, but we’re not taught how to find and keep our balance as we do so. It’s always one extreme pitted against another, and so we often find ourselves flailing while trying to grasp at everything but holding armfuls of nothing we really feel satisfied enough with in the end.
I’m hoping one day, we won’t have to teeter, we won’t even feel like we have to grasp or climb and climb at all. . but if one thing history has to teach it’s the fact that as humans we are by our very nature ambitious things. We are babylonians building our confused towers up to God-knows-where. Arms always reaching up to swipe at everything we know we could not possibly hold. And that tower is a beautiful sight in its own way, but it’s a tragic one too. And that’s okay. Building, teetering, balancing, flailing, falling – it’s all adventure in its own way. Adventure of the most raw & human kind. None of it nearly as neatly typed or heavily punctuated as this little blog post might wish to suggest. But it’s there whenever we care to sit down and take a look.
