
Adventures are Boring
In celebration of my eleventy-first post, I want to share with you my favorite fictional adventure: The Lord of the Rings.
I re-read the trilogy every 2 to 3 years because:
A. It’s nostalgic.
B. It’s boring.
The later point is what I want to focus on today. Adventures are boring.
- Climbing a mountain is a monotonous task.
- Swimming across the English Channel is cold and lonely.
- Even capturing this perfect image of the solar eclipse took hours of waiting around.
Our culture is obsessed with instant gratification. We expect our efforts to yield rewards here and now.
Adventure today is almost synonymous with adrenaline or excitement.
But it’s the slow burn of embers, not the flicker of flames, that gives off the greatest heat.
To truly experience adventure, we must delay our expectations for gratification. We must put aside our comforts. We must buckle in for the boring, the cold, and the lonely. We must be patient.
The true adventurers learn to appreciate the small steps, not the grand leaps.

