How important is adventure to the human spirit? Do we need adventure? I've been thinking about childhood adventure, and about books like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Is a childhood without adventure a stunted childhood?
What about adults? Our lives often seem so safe, so controlled, so dictated by necessities. Does this mean that we have traded in passion for security?
To me, adventure conjures up images of vitality, both of body and spirit. We are most alive when we are in the midst of adventure. I suppose I most readily associate adventure with surfing, whitewater kayaking, rafting, backpacking, and things of that nature. To me, this sort of adventure not only makes me feel alive, but it also makes me feel connected -- I feel like I intimately belong to this world in which I live. This feeling is paramount to the well-being of my soul.
So, how 'bout y'all? How do you define adventure? How important is it to the human experience?
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What do you look for most in movies or literature?
Whither goest thou, America?
Who are your favorite candidates from each party?
Election 2008: which of the following issues do you consider most important to informing your support of a candidate?
Which of the following are you most concerned about? (I tried to configure this so that you can select multiple answers.)
The good books
- Heart of Darkness
- Christ the Eternal Tao
- Wounded by Love
- Dhamapada
- Visions of Gerard
- Rumi's poetry
- Leaves of Grass
- Batlthazar
- the gospel of John
- Emerson's essays
- Zen and the Birds of Appetite
- Ecclesiastes
- Walden
- Song of Songs
- Tao te Ching
- The Brothers Karamazov
Which of the following have most profoundly affected you? You can choose a couple of answers.
Quotations (feel free to add to this list)
- "Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you." -- William Blake
- "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes." -- Thoreau
- "I don't want to die without any scars." -- Tyler Durden
- "I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough." -- Walt Whitman
- "If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." -- Morpheus
- "My headphones saved my life." -- Bjork
- "Perfect humility dispenses with modesty." -- C.S. Lewis
movies worth watching
- The Painted Veil
- Three Seasons
- Hero
- Othello
- Smoke Signals
- Step Into Liquid
- The Long Hot Summer
- The Matrix
- Cool Hand Luke
- Fight Club
- The Mission
Outside of your own world view, which of the following do find most resonates with you?
Which of the following would you say have been the most influential in forming who you are today?
Sacred Cows: which of the following would you identify as the most sacred of American cows? In other words, which seems to be the most socially unacceptable to question?
About Me
root systems
- http://travel.msn.com//Guides/greenSlideShow.aspx?cp-documentid=385955&imageindex=1
- http://www.littleportion.org/Vocations/index.asp?id=52
- http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/organic-food.htm
- http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/yourchild/tv.htm
- http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/
- http://www.myspace.com/buckcalhoun
- http://www.usnwc.org/
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYzQ_ZpfDLs
- http://www.stherman.com/
- http://www.redwoods-rivers.com/
- http://nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm
13 comments:
Great question. Here's a great answer:
http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=42
Poem called Children, by Longfellow.
I think poems are a great way to answer this question! Here are the first four lines of a famous one by Blake ("Auguries of Innocence"):
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
Among other things, this suggests to me that adventure has little to do with externals. One can be just as intimately in sync with the world's vastness at a flower show or locked in a room as in the great outdoors.
You know, I have to disagree with you; however, my disagreement may very well be subjective. Here's where my perspective differs: to me, seeing the wonders and mysteries of the universe in a grain of sand or in a flower is contempletive. I have great esteem for the contempletive aspects of life, but at the same time, I can't help but feel that there is an important distinction to be made between contemplation and appreciation on the one hand, and participation and experience on the other. I want to know the world in the 'biblical' sense of the word.
Blake said something along the lines that the senses are the outward parts of the soul. I think the implication is that our spiritual experience of the world must include the physical too.
This is interesting, but looking at a flower falls into the realm of sensory experience to me. I don't contemplate it; I get a visual charge.
Are some sensory experiences superior to others? Is an adrenaline-producing sensory experience superior to others, or at least necessary to give life full richness? Is a quadriplegic barred from this richness? Maybe all the answers are in the affirmative . . . I don't know.
I think to me it's like the liturgy, in the sense that the liturgy is designed to engage a person through all the senses, to create a complete experience.
I don't mean to criticize any one particular experience; I just think that there is so much greater potential for intimacy when more human faculties are engaged.
To experience the world with muscle, with intuition, with reflex, with skin . . . there's an intimacy in that which can't be replaced.
Perhaps God could give you the grace to be spiritually sustained in whatever capacity you find yourself (a paralyzed man may not be able to go surfing, but he may be able to experience nature in other ways). Those confined to a hospital bed may need nature brought to them, but it does seem that some exposure to nature is important.
I believe that there are often consolations, that often those who are deprived of their faculties find joy through their remaining faculties, or through previously unimagined vehicles.
Still, the focus of my thought is on those who are in full possession of all of their natural faculties. And I remain convinced that the more levels on which one is able to engage the world, the more connected, united, and whole that person's life will be.
So, I suppose my point is this: is it not the natural human condition to desire to embrace life on all levels, to interact with the world, God, and fellow human beings in the fullness of interaction?
Interesting exchange. Reading it gives me a charge!
But from the original post there has been a separation between spirit and body, between the potential and the actual.
As persons our nature blends (as in solution, not in mixture) spirit and body in a way that makes two directions possible: what is potential in spirit can become actual in body; and visa versa. Conversation and the exchange of ideas make a great example of both directions.
BUT, this abstraction is really a messy way of getting back to where you started with CHILDHOOD adventure. For the child, the adventure is in the discovery. A child IS potential personified! To him the world is an open treasure chest! But to us old farts, the treasure only SEEMS to diminished when we retain our childish eyes...which is to say, if all we're looking for is something NEW, then we waste the experience that the exuberance of youth plunged us into. For us, the treasure is in DEPTH of things already discovered.
This is why you're all correct! For the contemplative whose portal is a flower, he finds deep beauty. For the musically inclined, one tune can supply an endless reservoir of insight. For the vigorous, strength and bold interactions cast the world into a pin-point of clarity, through which self-discovery pays repeated dividends.
All of these things come from that wonderful thing called LIFE, through the many passages of the body and spirit.
You're right, Theo-fan . . . my problem is that I always generalize about people. We all have different ways of perceiving. Thanks for pointing it out.
Here's another quote (a long one) apropos of our conversation. This one is from Emerson.
"Things are so strictly related, that according to the skill of the eye, from any one object the parts and properties of any other may be predicted. If we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city wall would certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as readily as the city. That identity makes us all one, and reduces to nothing great intervals on our customary scale. We talk of deviations from natural life, as if artificial life were not also natural. The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, and is directly related, there among essences and billetsdoux, to Himmeleh mountain-chains, and the axis of the globe. If we consider how much we are nature's, we need not be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or benefic force did not find us there also, and fashion cities. Nature who made the mason, made the house. We may easily hear too much of rural influences. The cool disengaged air of natural objects, makes them enviable to us, chafed and irritable creatures with red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as they, if we camp out and eat roots; but let us be men instead of woodchucks, and the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of ivory on carpets of silk."
To gaze into the eyes of your love is to see the edges of her soul.
To talk deeply with your love is to know her mind and her heart.
To make love to your love is to melt into one.
Let me ask y'all a question: which of these single things would you like to share with your wives (or husbands, as the case may be)?
I don't see how it relates to the conversation, but...
Each of the options you offer has its place and time. But, even as stated, each bears the inordinate burden of an undeliverable promise. To touch the soul of another is a fearful thing. I, for one, dare not.
Let me, rather, commune with the Maker of souls, and through His mediation, let soul be joined to soul in perfect balance: contemplation, conversation, and consummation.
In Him, holiness prevails. On my own, I risk grave damage to myself or to her, through ineptitude, inexperience, or pure ignorance--nevermind deep set selfishness.
Hooo! You zigged when I thought you'd zag. Here's where that thought was going. I asked about different ways of knowing your wife, assuming everybody would say they want to know their wife in all of those ways, not just one.
I could have asked the exact same question about how you want to know the natural world. Do you want to know the world through a few sensory experiences or through all of them?
You made a great point about depth. Chasing adrenaline thrills is childish after a while, but there's nothing juvenile about wanting to know the world in more depth as you say. The way to know the world in greater depth is to experience it in new ways. One of these ways is adventure. So I would say that adventure isn't just an option for people with particular inclinations, it's an important way of knowing the world that nobody should neglect.
oooH!
I get it, now. You make a great point.
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