Adventure is Out There

     Carl and Ellie Fredrickson would always enthusiastically repeat their hero Charles Muntz's catchphrase: "Adventure is out there!"
     G.K. Chesterton wrote once that "an inconvenience is merely an adventure wrongly considered, and an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered." Which, when you stop and puzzle over this statement, seems true, and a good attitude to have towards life in general besides.
     And Louis L'Amour's take on the concept in his autobiography: "Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble." While pessimistic, this sounds pretty accurate, too.

     Living, in itself, usually creates or means dealing with other people's trouble. It's just kind of part of the deal. And sometimes that can be frustrating, worrisome, painful, or just otherwise unpleasant. As Frodo told Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring, "I wish it did not have to happen in my time." The wise old wizard replies, "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time given us." And in The Two Towers, Tolkien continues, "the world indeed is full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands now love is mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."

     Who knows what college will bring this year? (Wait - I do! "Raises hand". It'll be full of STRESS, lots of hurrying form one place to the next, many tiresome nights and long days, waiting impatiently for things, and monotonous food. And I'll hate it.) Yes, that is true. But it will also probably bring small unexpected sparks of encouragement from strange sources, as well as a for-enjoyment story here or there to savor and cherish and learn from.

     Two years ago, I wrote the following paragraph, in a post The Golden Road; "Right now, I'm kind of scared. But it's time to go, like it or not. Life's an adventure, and it's always best when taken day-by-day, though quite a bit more stressful and tiring. Life's also a dance, as the song says, and you learn it as you go. That's good to know. So as I wind down this last blog post(for a while) typed on the computer in the office at home, where I wrote down many articles over the weeks chasing news stories and had a lot of conversations with friends, I know my future is in God's hands, and He'll work everything out just the way it's supposed to. That doesn't really keep me from being nervous or anxious about the journey, but it provides some comfort as I doublecheck to make sure I've packed everything."
     That still pretty much fits.

     It just seems like I'm slowly getting more open to adventures. (But college doesn't count. At all.)