The High Cost of Loving or Being an Adventurer

A lot of people I know, or people who I know were close to, have died or been seriously injured this year. It's been a shitty year with a lot more of that than I'm used to.

In fact, this year is the first time I've been to a funeral service for a person over the age of thirty. The majority of people I know who have died were my own generation.

No, they weren't killed in military service.

They died or were injured doing dangerous things not to kill-or-be-killed for the abstract, unattained freedom of a country, but in the purely “selfish,” noble act of attaining personal freedoms. They were adventurers.

They flew planes, and jumped out of them. They climbed cliff faces, and jumped off the top. They soared under fabric wings, raced across the earth on two wheels, and explored this planet we happen to live on. These people can be some of the most annoying in the world, or the coolest.

This is, of course, not to say that others who do not participate in these more extreme types of activities are not adventurers, in their own right. I'm an artist—my adventure takes place within my mind. Others adventures are in raising children, or in helping the sick and injured, or teaching.

But the adventurers I'm talking about are the ones whose freedom, whose adventure, all too often comes at a price. A high cost that those of us around them are also affected by.

It's a cost that manifests as a heart seizing whenever someone calls at an odd time, or leaves too vague a message. It manifests as anxiety, that fills you up when you haven't heard from someone in a while, or you hear of an accident on the news, or just around the time you know they'll be doing something everyone else thinks is crazy. It manifests as nightmares of what could be or is. It manifests as becoming defensive towards the critics of the lifestyle, who call it selfish and stupid and Darwinian, as though their lives are the great ones, as though they're not the selfish ones, as though they live because they're smart and not because they're just lazy jackasses who never leave their couch anyway. It manifests as the knowledge that there's a good chance they won't survive the next decade, so you take every chance you can to spend time with them until IT happens. An IT that's not as likely as some would have you believe, but a large enough likelihood to be prevalent.

It manifests in having the conversation with a 20...21...25 year old over what they want you to do should if they Go In while you watch, and all you can think of is how much you don't want to think about the person you love dying right in front of you, but you'd rather that than The Phone Call.

It manifests as a state of awe at the world and at these few people in it who dare.

It manifests as breathtaking experiences that stay with you forever.

It's a thorough appreciation of mortality, and of the fact that “lifetime” or “lifespan” are two of the most vague terms ever.

It's amazing.

It can hurt more than anything, and be so spectacular that it's worth it.

Here's hoping for long lives and many more adventures.

Much love to anyone who's been left behind.

I don't think I could fully describe what I was trying to, so this is as close as I can get.