Why Not Make It An Adventure?

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." - G. K. Chesterton

I used to be a die-hard planner. Not so much in the sense that I always made plans, but more in the sense that I always had a plan in my head about how a given situation was going to turn out, a set of expectations for every event. I guess you could have called me more of an "expecter" than a planner. If things didn't go how I expected them to, I got downright grumpy because I was disappointed, inconvenienced you could say, and nobody likes to be disappointed or inconvenienced.

Fast forward to today. Over the past several years, I've learned to let go of these expectations as much as possible. Now I try to walk into a situation with some general notions of what may happen, some options and possibilities, but as few set expectations as I reasonably can. Aside from being disappointed far less often, this has had a most unexpected side effect. It has taught me the joy of a good adventure.

Many of my recent adventures have been piggy-backed off of work-related trips; if I have to travel for a class or a meeting, I always try to make sure I have some time to "get lost" in the area, especially if it's somewhere I've never been before. I don't ever complain about having to travel for work; to the contrary, I love it! I have had the best times in dives, holes-in-the-wall, and local hangouts simply because I was wandering around a new place with no set destination in mind. I've met fun people, tried different foods, gone to exciting shows, and just plain had a great time. It's fun, it's exciting, and it's liberating.

Mind you, I still need to make plans when I travel. If I'm taking a trip somewhere, I have to make travel arrangements, coordinate with friends & family (and work, sadly), and make any other necessary preparations in order to make the trip go smoothly. That's all scheduling. But you can't schedule an adventure, they just tend to happen once everything else is taken care of.

And then there are the little adventures that are truly random. Today, for example, I hit really bad traffic on my way home, so instead of sitting in it, I diverted to downtown Frederick to explore a little bit. I found several very neat stores that I had never been in before and found some great gift ideas. Not really a grand adventure mind you, but a good time doing new things nonetheless, and all because I just went with the flow. (Or, technically, didn't go with the non-flow, but you get the point.)

So what's the moral of this story? Stop spending so much time trying to plan life and just let it happen. You'll be amazed at what you've been missing....

(First image is taken from the public domain, courtesy of Wikipedia. Second image taken from the collection of the author.)