Explore Again
I’ve grown tired of being a grown up. Maybe you have too.
Yes, it’s nice to have my own money, my own space, and a sense of autonomy. This is success, after all. A test passed: learned what I needed to learn, grown how I needed to grow and from here it’s all clear sailing until, at long last, I get to retire. So this is it. Get comfortable. Save up. Stay healthy. Build your career, or whatever.
Is that what it’s all about, the best we can muster? It might be, you know. It might be that the key to a satisfied, decent existence is to not ask too many questions. Show up, do the work, be kind where you can, and leave this place tidier than you found it. That sounds alright. Perhaps the problem is me. I simply can’t stop myself from dreaming of wild places, new things to see and do. I am a seeker. Through exploration I see a way to beauty and truth. All I want is everything and sometimes I wonder if it will tear me apart.
I posit that exploration is as good a reason for existence as anything else we have going on. The problem is that it seems to be in strong opposition to a number of other things we have been instructed to care about; namely, “progress.” Curiosity and exploration don’t have enough utility. It’s a leisure activity or something for those less serious. We have the future to prepare for, after all.
These more traditional viewpoint. You need the degree to get the job to get the next degree to get the job to get the house and the family and the next house and the next family, and on and on. It ignores the quality of the journey so enthralled is it in arriving. s are making a critical error in presupposing that this busy work is in service of a defined destination. What this outlook forgets is that the moment you believe yourself to have arrived, the goal posts move. So would it look like if we made the journey the purpose (or at least gave it some renewed focus).
It’s a frightening idea, I agree, even bordering on nihilistic (also loaded with privilege of stability of family and economics). It won’t be the path for everyone. Even as I write this, I indeed remain a very traditional person on the very course I’ve set out to critique! As I said off the top, I like my stuff, I need my comforts. I have two feet firmly on the grown up, status quo side of the fence, but I’m leaning over to see what’s on the other side. That’s where I think we can start: an awareness.
In our eagerness to move towards this very hazy goal on the horizon, we hastily toss away some important gifts. Play, creativity, curiosity, these things that don’t help us with our next raise or raising a family. Because we’re focused on the false belief that there is a purpose to this mess, the things that don’t serve that are under utilized. Exploration can have value in and of itself. Call it nurturing the soul, if you like, or challenging preconceptions. It’s an openness to mystery and the unknown in a world of certainties and proofs.
This is my hypothesis, anyhow. I think that anyone can make room for a bit more curiosity, a bit more adventure, that has nothing to do with your job, your kids, your life. It’s outside of that. There’s something pure here and vital. As everything get easier, smaller, on demand, we need to find the strength to seek out something new that maybe we don’t understand.
For anyone thinking along the same lines, I hope the story of our journey opens you up to new possibility. It doesn’t mean an extended vacation to Mexico. Perhaps, in your own way, you can alter the narrative about on what a good life is supposed to contain – forward progress! – and take a minor detour, a little sneak peak over the fence, into something fully unknown. Then, when we’ve had our fill, we can go back to being adults again. Hopefully taking with us a little bit of something we lost. A willingness to take a different route home not because it’s more efficient, but because we know that it isn’t.
