Some of us plan ahead and I like to imagine myself as someone who lives life with a certain degree of forethought. There are summers where I plan out my academic and career path, winters where I plan summer holidays, but as far as planning goes it never gets past what I see immediately in front of me.
There are days where I dream of the places I want to go and nights where I drive between the moon and New York City to get to those places. I met Emily who recently got married and my cousin who is now expecting. It seems as if everyone’s raising a family when I’m only raising dreams.
No girlfriend, no house, no car. Just a man in his early twenties living out a teenage dream thinking that if he doesn’t get out of it soon it’ll turn into a nightmare. I planned a trip across America from the Pacific to the Atlantic a few months in advance. I drove around in a car that’s not mine staying where I didn’t belong talking only to the robotic female voice behind the car’s infotainment screen. The longest conversation I had on the road for three weeks driving across America was when the GPS voice control couldn’t distinguish ‘Minneapolis’ from ‘Indianapolis’. That conversation went on for 15 kilometres.
Now I’m sitting on an airplane alone, with no neighbor enjoying three feet of legroom. I munched on three juicy looking burritos wrapped in tinfoil looking like I’m living the life everyone wants – the adventure, the sights, the people, the glamorous nights out, the $100k car, the spontaneous exploration of national parks – all just a façade. All just to chase a dream.
I suppose adventuring is my way of progressing into the next stage of life, of realizing what I don’t yet have but feel the urge to attain. The first step was going from a passive learner to an active learner; to seek out information about the world around me without prompt. The second stage was to turn from a learner to an experiencer; going out to try new things and seeing textbook items for real. The third step was to become an adventurer; not just to do what someone else told me to do but also to create whole new ways of absorbing the world around me. Now that I’m running out of things to do on my bucket list I think I’m approaching the fourth stage: sharing.
Even though I’m not there yet, the rain has gone and I’m left with a partially cloudy view of the fourth stage. It probably involves some kind of commitment to a relationship, someone with whom to celebrate life and share what you have learned, experienced, and adventured in the first three stages. Maybe learn more, experience more, and keep on adventuring with that person. I’m not sure, I might be wrong.
The fifth stage, I’m guessing, involves some sort of procreation, so I don’t have to worry about that now. I don’t understand what it’s about so I’m not able to plan that far out anyways. I have seen how Emily and my cousin are now both mature and future parents of good character and I think I’m still behind on my mindset. I’m not alone. When I tell my friends:
“I drove 130 miles an hour on the I-90 in Montana!”
I usually get one of two responses:
“Cool man, we should do that together sometime!”
Or
“Isn’t that dangerous? What if you get arrested?”
Then I know which camp they belong in…the parents belong in the latter category while I’m still living in the glory of life in the fast lane. The responsible type completely deserves to have strong and gifted children in their loving families. Am I irresponsible?
Do you think I’m irresponsible? Let’s put it into context; it was dark, it was late, and I needed to get to North Dakota for the closest Motel 6, which was about 180 miles away. So I’d say at the time, given that there was almost no traffic on a latitudinal road that looked like it was paved by cartographers, it was a pretty sound idea. But in hindsight, maybe I could’ve kept it at 90 miles an hour instead. After all, what’s 30 minutes on a 3 week long trip?
That said, I have no regrets. How else am I going to be able to tell my grandchildren in stage nine:
“Kiddo, I’m cooler than you think.”
