What on earth is adventure? The word is thrown around like no other. Is it something you do? Or maybe something that happens to you? Is it a feeling? Does it describe something, or is it just an idea?
I see the word everywhere; the other day, I even saw it printed on the side of some fella's sandals. Did his sandals allow adventure? Or maybe buying them was an adventure. When a word gets overused, it loses meaning, and the number of different contexts it appears in creates a vagueness in its comprehension. Its meaning becomes corroded.
When I think of adventure, I think of Scotts 1911 expedition to the South Pole. A group of British explorers racing the Norwegian team to the most remote place on earth. I think of challenges, problem-solving, epic scenery, connection to people and an element of self-growth, or at least learning something new about yourself. It annoys me how a pair of sandals has usurped the word. You can’t even wear sandals at the North Pole; it would be bloody mayhem.
I love adventure, but I hate this linguistic nightmare. I want to align my goals and spirit with the adventures of old, but when I see those geezer’s sandals, I feel like a chump. Like I’ve been had, the corporate world won and stole my sense of adventure. In my monkey brain, I see two possible ways of fixing this feeling.
Dive into what adventure really means, and create a solid connection to the word with layers of subtle understanding.
Just sack the word off and use something else instead: romp, excursion, jaunt.
Option 2 feels lazy, and no other word gives me the feeling I want, so here we are, exploring what adventure really means. I’ve got a few ideas, but let’s start with the technical etymology of the word. That might bring a little light into the overcrowded bunker that is ‘adventure.’
So where does the word come from? We start with Latin.
ad : to
venire : to come
Making
Advenire : come to, reach, arrive at
Next we add
Adventura (res) : (a thing) about to happen
After that, we have the Old French variation
Aventure : Chance, accident, occurrence, event, happening
Then Middle English
Auenture : that which happens by chance, fortune, luck
Then we have our Modern English
Adventure : an unusual and exciting or daring experience.
Just looking at the evolution of the word brings more clarity to the situation. It starts with a destination, then turns into an event, then adds an element of fortune/luck, and finally adds some excitement and something daring or bold.
Because I’m a nerd, I want to look further back, so if we look at the first word ‘venire’ and trace that back to the Proto-Indo-European root, we get the word Gwā, meaning “to go”. Something is satisfying in this because it loops back to my modern idea of the word. I see adventure mainly in the future tense. It’s what lies ahead that matters most to me. it’s from the perspective of looking at the horizon and asking the question ‘what's over there?’ whereas the Latin Adventure “to come” talks from the perspective that we have already arrived.
Okay, so it is all well and good to look back at the word and what it has and hasn’t meant before. But at the end of the day, we are contemporary folk, and it means something right now, and it’s going to twist and evolve going forward. So let’s set the task of creating some pillars of adventure, the key aspects and principles that when you take a step back, you can be like, ‘yep, that was bloody adventurous.’
Some Pillars of Adventure
Planning of some sort
The overcoming of challenges through grit or a bit of problem-solving.
A moment where you feel connected to the experience of life. whether it be the scenery, others or simply existing.
Some examples of self-learning or growth.
Novelty, experiencing something new.
An element of well-managed risk.
and there it is, a more plump definition of adventure. Useless to most but maybe interesting for some. I hope you’re getting out there on adventures of your own.
P.
