[Greetings from Palm Springs, beautiful people! Over the next couple of days, I’ll be hiking mountains here and collecting miles as part of a fitness retreat. As someone whose tendency (especially when working on a book) is to withdraw from the world out there to the one within, Hume’s words to “[b]e a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy be still a man” are always a welcome reminder. Explore. Dream. Discover. Adventure. And do it all in the company of good friends.
Speaking of adventure, something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately with the release of my second book (which you can purchase below) is how adventure and meaning are core cravings of the human soul and how we often look for substitutes to fulfill the needs that only the genuine thing can provide. To that topic, we now turn.]
Adventure is written on the human heart. For as long as we have been able to communicate with each other, adventures have been at the center of our stories. Great poets and writers throughout the ages have expressed the intuition that something about adventure is fundamental to who we are and where we find meaning—whether it’s the first recorded story, the Epic of Gilgamesh around 1800 BC, or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
Hero stories everywhere remind us: there is no hero without adventure. Without adventure, there is no flourishing. Without flourishing, there is nothing to strive for and no excellence to aim for. And without aim, there is none of that deep feeling of soul satisfaction that Aristotle called eudaimonia—the stream of joy flowing from a life lived in accordance with virtue that Aristotle argued was part of the end, or Good, we’re all really after.
For Aristotle, everything we do aims at the Good and the feelings that come when we’re in its presence (i.e., eudaimonia). Our work, our purchases, our hobbies, our relationships. All of it, Aristotle thought, is done by us that we might find the Good and experience happiness. Only happiness (or, in our case, eudaimonia) was an end in itself; everything else was a means to that end.
In stories, this happiness we’re all after is poetically illustrated in things like the Holy Grail that the knights in King Arthur’s court quest for or the Mount Olympus Hercules fights for when enduring the Twelve Labors. In video games, this flourishing is represented when a character levels up or finds a treasure. In each case, it is the reward for an adventure completed.
These stories and games draw us in because they reflect our deep desires for adventure (and the chance at true joy they bring). They capitalize on our core yearnings by allowing us to participate secondhand. When we read about the great adventurers or play with avatars in a video game, we are invited to feel a part of what they must feel. We are offered the opportunity to get a glimmer of their glory by association. We feel the warmth radiating off their body and think we’re standing in the sun. When really, we’re sitting in the shadows.
Herein lies the problem: they lure us into a substitute for the real thing. The adventures we experience through books, movies, video games, and virtual reality are but shadows of real adventure—copies of the real thing. As such, they cannot offer the deep soul satisfaction that we’re all after; they can only give us momentary and fleeting flashes of real happiness (eudaimonia).
But that will not stop more people from seeking heaven in all the wrong places. As virtual reality promises, like in Ready Player One, that we can be whoever we want, go wherever we want to go, and feel however we want to feel, without any of the risks of real adventure, more will opt into the hits of cheap dopamine. We will sell ourselves on the idea that the fabricated happiness we can feel in there is much better than any that can be found out here, in the real world. Yet our soul, the one that craves real adventure, and the thing separate from our flesh, will always know the difference between candy and a nourishing meal.
Virtual reality will just be the latest opportunity for more people to opt out of reality. If we can get the happiness we’re after without having to navigate the difficulties of real life, why bother with reality? Video games are popular among young men (myself included, at least up until a few years ago) because they allow us to live the glory of the adventure without any of the risks. In the digital world, we can operate where we know exactly what we have to do to level up (unlike the real world, where things are messy and ambiguous). We can play as a character in Call of Duty that is courageous and feel, at least a little, like we are courageous.
We see this unfulfilled desire for adventure also appear in drugs and alcohol. In a certain sense, drugs and alcohol are a way to get ourselves to engage in an adventure that we are too timid to do sober. Looking back now on the days I used to drink, I can see clearly that what I was really craving was meaning and adventure. Whenever we drink to excess or take drugs until we’re hallucinating, it is an adventure—a cheap and synthetic adventure, where nothing is required of us other than taking the substance.
But too much shadow adventure and the soul grows restless, because there is a place where the sensual delights of things fabricated, no matter how pleasurable in the moment, cannot reach. That is why shadow adventures—in all their forms—sell us short in the end. There is no substitute for the real thing.
Which is why I’m off on an adventure.
I pray you find time to regularly do the same. :)
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P.S. These shadow adventures are not necessarily bad in themselves, especially insofar as they introduce us to the real thing. I’m as big a fan as any of reading about heroes big and bold, watching movies that move me, and playing games that show me something of my potential. The point I am making is that we must not forget that they are not real adventures and, thus, cannot offer us the type of happiness that comes from active flourishing in the real world. For all our secondhand participation and the whiffs of glory they give us, we must always make it a point to enter into the arena of adventure ourselves. We can use these things to fill our sails with inspiration, but eventually contemplation must turn into action. We ultimately must live a life of adventure, not simply read about it. If we don’t, we are destined to live life in the cold and dark shadows of who we could be.
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P.P.S. My idea of shadow adventures is partially inspired by Steven Pressfield’s concept of the shadow career—which, as a startup lawyer, opened my eyes to what I really wanted to be doing. Pressfield’s observation regarding why people pick shadow careers over their deepest longing is also why we pick shadow adventures: they offer a taste of what we really desire without any of the risks. Here’s how Pressfield describes the shadow career:
Sometimes, when we’re terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead. The shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.
Are you pursuing a shadow career?
Are you getting your Ph.D. in Elizabethan Studies because you’re afraid to write the tragedies and comedies you know you have inside you? Are you living the drugs-and-booze half of the musician’s life, without actually writing the music? Are you working in a support capacity for an innovator because you’re afraid to risk being an innovator yourself?
If you’re dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for.
That metaphor will point you toward your true calling.1
https://stevenpressfield.com/2012/06/more-from-turning-pro/