Adventure is [in] there

I’m replaying the scene in my head from the movie Up where Carl meets Ellie—the fun-loving, crazy and spontaneous girl—and they are hanging out in the tree-house.

Ellie: I’m going to show you something I have never showed another human being

Carl: What is it?

E: It’s my adventure book!

C: What’s that?

E: It’s all the places I want to go and see and look, look at this! This is Paradise Falls! I am going to put my house right there on that edge! The only thing is, I don’t’ know how I’m  going to get there. Oh! I know! You’ll take me there on a blimp! You have to promise you’ll take me there okay? Cross your heart!

C: shakes head in both excitement about going to Paradise Falls and the fear of what Ellie will do if she doesn’t get there

As Ellie runs out of the tree house excited about her new plan to go to Paradise Falls, she shouts (almost with a spear in her hand ready to charge), “Adventure is out there!”

Hmmmmmmmm. It’s as if this mystery of another world is being pondered in the minds of the viewers. And we all relate to these kids because at one point in our lives we sat out in a tree house somewhere and imagined all the places we wanted to go and all the things we wanted to be.  I used to play in the tree-fort in the backyard and talk about with my best friend about how we were going to follow the equator around the world. Then we would chase the sunset all the way to the other side of the earth. And until I was 12 years old I wanted to be the first woman to play professional baseball; there was not a doubt in my mind. But we all know that those dreams die, because we realize they are not realistic. Stuff like that can’t really happen. Where and when does this shift happen? It’s when we transition from a child’s mind to an adult’s mind. From a child who uses her imagination and finds satisfaction in creating dreams, to a practical, realistic and conservative framework whose only purpose is to “survive” and “live comfortably”. A child dreams are based on their imagination (what’s inside), while an adult focuses their attention on the outside experiences that have tainted their view of who they really are.

Our day-to-day lives seem redundant and valueless. We work today to survive tomorrow…and then work again. It’s as if we are just learning how to survive in a world that desperately needs us to come alive—and thrive. What if we were meant for more than the standard cycle of life? (birth, marriage, childbearing, death) What if we were created for overcoming obstacles, challenges, believing in the unseen, serving people, love? The truth is that we were created for that. It’s not so much about getting to “point B” as it is the journey and dream that got us there. Adventure starts with the daring dreamer inside all of us. So we start to shift from standing at the window, pointing our finger out at the sky saying, "Adventure is out there", to an awareness of the heartbeat inside of us and realize "adventure is in there". When we embark on THAT type of journey we find that adventure is not “out there” anymore, it’s within ourselves.