life life life and my quarter life crisis

i've been trying to convince myself lately that i'm not wasting time. do you often feel like the things you're doing are trivial and that you're letting some life that's "out there" get away? well, i do. i think i've been watching too many movies and reading too many books. movies and books hardly ever focus on the mundane seasons of a person's life. yes, they may briefly note the mundane, bleak existence of the main character while introducing the story, but the purpose of doing this is to then provide a backdrop from which exciting change and adventure takes place. a number of movies come to mind when i think of such stories, garden state and stranger than fiction being the immediate examples. maybe i'm waiting for that film-worthy moment in my life, or maybe i just want my life to be epic. forget one film-worthy season in life, i want my entire life to be film-worthy! don't misunderstand me, i could not care less about my life becoming a film or story, and i certainly do not care to be famous. i do care to have an adventurous life. so far i'm not doing terribly, though i have one complaint against myself; all of my decisions are too calculated. i think too much. i worry too much about what other people would think. i am a slave to obligation. these are my difficulties being adventure. plus it's just not practical to the average human. i'm not alone in this, most people are not adventurous and most adventures are short-lived. sure, a lot of folks are "adventurous," but in cute ways. i'd say my adventurous expressions are "cute." the problem with cute adventures is that they are always controllable and they end as soon as the person experiencing them becomes uncomfortable. in my humble opinion a true adventure is uncontrollable and unpredictable. the point of an adventure is that you don't know the outcome and that you cannot easily control it, but that you hopefully remain alive to accomplish some important goal in the end.

i once listened to donald miller speak on "life as a narrative." it was brilliant and really enjoyable. the gist was that every good story has conflict. there must be something at stake in order to create an adventurous, interesting narrative. the bible is full of conflict and thus, interesting stories. miller asked an explanatory question using two scenarios the first of which involved a man working for a volvo, and the second involved a woman (his friend) working to build 1,000 wells in africa. his question; which would you care most about? if the man falls short of his goal and never gets the volvo it could be somewhat sad because perhaps he worked very hard, but not getting a volvo is hardly tragic. but if the woman fails to complete her goal of 1,000 wells we experience the loss of something much greater. lives are literally at stake, villages of people will not have easy access to water and their standard of living will remain low. see? not only must there be something at stake in the outcome of an adventure but getting there must be challenging. through challenge the adventurer is changed, matured, seasoned, and wiser for having the experienced the adventure. so let's view my criteria:

1. an adventure must be uncontrollable and unpredictable
2. there must be something valuable at stake (ethical value is a plus)
3. the person experiencing adventure must be changed (ideally for the better) in the process

reasonable? perhaps you say, "by this criteria i'm adventurous most of my life." you are either deserving of props or of a long vacation from adventuring. i imagine it can be pretty exhausting. after all of these considerations my question is whether adventure is sustainable. (there are some really annoying teenagers flirting at the table next to me. it's frigging horrible.) each respective adventure must have a conclusion. but is adventure as a lifestyle feasible? can adventure be somewhat practical so that interest and intrigue are still present in the midst of everyday? now i could end by saying something really lame like, "let's have an adventure finding the answers to these questions." i hate that stuff, haha. all i can say is that i'll be thinking about it and asking a bunch of people their opinions, and then hopefully i'll just go for it somehow.

goodnight.