On Adventure

I used to think that my life would be more exciting if it contained more travelling. That somehow there was a correlation between a life well lived and a person well-travelled.

Maybe you’ve thought that too.

Because we read books like Eat Pray Love and Three Cups of Tea and it seems like life will bring us more fulfillment if only we go, go, go.

We watch movies like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and we all agree that it’s more adventurous and it’s a better story if we are jumping out of helicopters or fighting off sharks.

I used to think that was true. Maybe it’s looked like to you like we are living a grand adventure over here in Thailand. And well, we are.

But I just want to remind you that you are also living a grand adventure.

In fact, you are living some adventures that we might not get to live. You might be living some adventures that we sadly sacrificed living to choose this other road we are on.

Denver is not our home anymore. That beautiful mile high city with twinkling lights and pedicabs and Rockies games and Mynt mojitos. With aspen trees with leafs that literally jingle. With promises of a white Christmas and snow days. With fall parties and carving pumpkins. Oh-we miss this city like we miss a friend. Denver is an adventure I hope we can live again.

We don’t live near our families. We can’t meet up for dinner. There is no “Richards” or “Cooprider” pew where we gather faithfully on a Sunday morning. There’s no Taco Tuesdays or game nights or home-cooked Chinese dinners. We can’t watch each other’s kids or buy each other’s groceries. We can’t pop in or catch a movie. We haven’t chose the adventure of living near our loved ones-but oh what a beautiful adventure that is!

We haven’t bought a home and planted our roots. We haven’t said “Texas Forever” and settled down. We haven’t learnt the beauty of a life lived long in one place-of learning so well friends and neighbors and restaurants and streets and every little bit of a little old town. There is a beauty and an adventure to that that I really would like to live. But we haven’t done that either.

 

So maybe sometimes you think we are crazy. Or maybe sometimes you think we are lucky. Just so you know, sometimes when we think of all of you we are jealous.

 

“Adventure is not outside man; it is within.”
― George Eliot

 

 ~Alissa