REBLOG: Seizing Adventure

This originally from A Deeper Story (http://deeperstory.com/seizing-adventure/)

I walked into the parking lot of a shopping mall in the California desert: a hot air blast as we left the polar extreme of the movie theatre. I was only 14 but I was inspired.

“O Captain, my captain.” “Carpe Diem… Seize the day!”

Now we see it as a sort of cultural embarrassment, a throwback to the nineties. How Robin Williams of you to quote “The Dead Poets’ Society”, you’re thinking. It’s a little like telling jokes straight out of “The Princess Bride” script.

But then it made so much sense to me.

I longed to be inspired enough to stand on a chair and address my teacher with the same passion as those students in that movie. Later, I opened journals under florescent desk lights of summer evenings trying desperately to write something of worth.

A few of my friends had seen that movie that same summer. We entered September with fresh pens, new backpacks and clean notebooks and in private we asked one of our English teachers to sponsor a secret club of ours.

{And who DIDN’T idolize their female English teachers. In only one hand they held the keys to Shakespeare and the rest of the literature universe and in the other hand the keys to the school.}

Behind drawn mini-blinds we sat on the tops of desks, opened brown sacks of lunch and we met without real purpose.

And our amazing teacher indulged our silliness.

A few of us tentatively shared poems or parts of essays we’d been working on. So vulnerable and so exposing.

I think I secretly wanted a reason to stand on my desk. I wanted to be inspired and I know now that I was simply looking for a story to live.

Fear kept me caged up, only tiptoeing through familiar classroom doors with half-sheets of half-poems, pencil through the base of my ponytail, living out an internal adventure rather than an external one.

I’m an introvert, I’d reason.

I like being alone, I would say to myself.

But who could have made me understand that internal adventures and valuable lessons come while engaging in external ones. These are priceless.

Maybe I should have jumped off the low bridge into the water those nights with everyone else. {They were so brave}

I should have figured out a way to do that exchange in France. It was ripe for me but I was too scared.

I should have.

I should have driven fast and stood up through the sunroof of my older friend’s Mazda.

Instead I huddled and hid behind my journal and an extra 30 pounds. I longed for a reason to stand up on my chair and

be

inspired.

I can’t go back and “seize” the nineties {and I’m not sure I want to}, but I can seize today. The external adventure, the kind that makes a heart race and blood flow all the way to my fingers, the kind that gives me something to write poetry about is the kind that creates the INTERNAL adventure of the soul.

And the best thing about it is that I don’t have to go to France or Africa to find it. I can, if I want, and I’ll have some amazing stories. Some of life IS finding the grandiose adventure, but most of it is more like:

Walking up to a stranger and becoming friends. Allowing a family to live with us while they find housing. Giving my money away. Giving my time away. Staying up late with friends while we try to solve the problems of the universe. Taking my girls on a flashlight hike or a nature walk.  Confessing my dark struggles to a friend.

This is all adventure. This is the stuff of inspiration. And I feel like running out and grabbing it.

I’m not too scared to stand on my desk this morning and seize today as if the dandelions and the new faces and the old ones too gave me a reason to live. And to write.

Are you going to grab today and let it inspire you?