Tension and Adventure

273 words, < 2 minutes

The goal of every adventure is to have another adventure.

That may seem obvious, but obvious doesn’t equal easy. We are pretty good at making the don’t-do-that-or-you’ll-die decisions. But the haze of smaller decisions can make us lose sight of the goal – not only going on more adventures but wanting to go on more adventures.

Every decision we make creates new risks and multiplies missed opportunities. The chorus of could and could-haves can be deafening as thoughts run wild in different directions. Decisions are inflection points that create tension.

However, tension is everywhere. It holds us together and pulls us apart. Tension turns into stress when we expect the tension to be binary on/off instead of a constantly stretching and evolving spectrum. I like imagining tension as the strings on an instrument – the tension is always different, it is rarely perfect, it doesn’t last long before it needs to be adjusted, and it shapes how we play.

As we gain experience, our expectations increase and so does the tension of imperfection. We often spend excessive amounts of time agonizing over small decisions – trying to get the tension just right. Small decisions feel harder because the choices are so similar. When we become so good at making unconscious decisions, we often get stuck making conscious decisions between two things that are basically the same. How much does it really matter?

Let’s spend more time on the big decisions. Let’s enjoy the tension of unpredictable and unbalanced adventures. And let’s try to line up those small decisions so our default status is getting outside more and coming home wanting to go again.