Does that picture look scary to you? It looks positively horrifying to us; as if the end of the world was approaching that hapless boater. Our cruising lives are very much oriented around avoidance of things like that, and avoidance of even more minor discomforts such as cold.
In reality (IMHO) we all live out lives on a continum. There is a tension between adventure and comfort.
I also believe that it is true that people admire adventure, and they yearn for it, but that nearly all of us choose to set our personal slider somewhere other than the extreme left. Extreme sports fans, such as wing suit flyers, who choose the far left are considered crazy, but still admired.
Libby and I greatly admire circumnavigators. They choose more adventure than we do. Many blog readers have said that they admire us because we choose more adventure than they do.
But each year that goes by, I think we slide a bit more to the right. The reason has less to do with seeking comfort than it is avoiding discomfort. Especially shaving off the extremes of discomfort. It is not something I'm ashamed of. It is a part of the reality of growing old with the satisfaction that we have an adequate store of memories of adventures past.
But it is not that simple. Fear of the unknown is also a kind of discomfort. That picture above is from the coast of Australia, a place that has many other attractions. Would we avoid going there just because there is a chance of a sandstorm? I think that our answer as North American natives would be very different than that of the Austrailian locals. That is the crux of adventure, the willingness to go ouside of the envelope of one's comfort zone to sample fresh experiences, both good and bad.
Hats off to adventurers, wherever they may be. The more of them exist, the better this world becomes.
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photoshop!
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