Part of our human Desire for Adventure is quite frankly curiosity. We want to know what is just over that next hill or around the next bend. It may be nothing consequential at all, but our curiosity will only be satisfied by taking that step.

Even someone like me who lives a rather unadventurous life can be curious about just about anything. I can wonder about anything from my job to power soccer. Through that process, I am going somewhere I have not been before. It may not seem like much, but it feeds that desire for something new. It feeds that desire for discovering the unknown.

You wonder why people get wrapped up in books. The beauty of reading a story is that you didn’t create it yourself. You are going on an adventure into someone else’s mind, and you are experiencing what they want you to experience. It is something foreign to the reader, so it is a degree of adventure even if you never leave your living room.

Or, consider how we all get excited when we meet new people. Even that new contact is a type of adventure. You don’t know very much about these people, but you get to try to learn about them. You get to see how much you actually like them. You get to see what their personalities are like and see what interests these people have. Again, it is a type of adventure to try to satisfy this curiosity about other people.

I think that part of the reason most of us feel like we don’t have very adventurous lives is because we don’t consider these small adventures that are all around us. I’m not saying that we are all going to go on an epic quest to find the Fountain of Youth or something like that. We don’t all quit our jobs and embark on a voyage across the ocean. Very few people actually do that kind of thing. However, if that is all we think about when we think about the idea of an adventure, then I think we are missing out on the adventure within the ordinary.

This may seem to be a contradiction in terms of course. An adventure is often times portrayed as a departure from the ordinary. I remember in high school learning about what they called the hero’s journey, and the whole point was that the hero had to leave “home” or the ordinary.

Isn’t that exactly what I am advocating for above though? I am saying that wondering within our own minds, looking into the mind of another author or even meeting new people has a dimension of adventure to them. Our curiosity causes us to want to figure out something new. Our curiosity causes us not simply remain in our bubbles.

I think we are designed this way for a reason. I think there is a reason that we have this desire to even find out simple things that might be around the corner or whistling down the river. Something is most definitely coming.