Adventure’s Waiting Rooms

Tick tock…

It’s the nature of adventure to be rife with risk.

I just like my risk to be immediate. No time to think. Be in it. Go with it. Be done. Win or lose, doesn’t even matter. I just like to focus my mind on the present. Make it happen. Put my all in. Come what may.

The odds of this happening are low.

Adventure requires planning.

And I am an excellent planner. Top-notch, actually. I can run on adrenaline alone for weeks and gather all necessary tools like a squirrel before a New England winter. I am even skilled at carefully calculating outcomes.

I just don’t particularly excel at waiting.

And adventure is full of waiting rooms.

You have to wait your turn to bungee jump off a cliff, train for months before running a marathon, sell your house before you can embark on building a new one.

There are endless liminal spaces in which to flip flop on your decision, renegotiate it in your head, change your mind in a continuous loop of near insanity.

These spaces make me physically anxious.

I can feel it in my chest. Tight. And my neck. Tense. I can feel it in the spiky nature of ability to navigate the simple things. Like a delayed flight, mediocre coffee, a sore neck or whiny child.

Normally when these very small fluctuations in The Plan occur, I am quite good at rolling with it.

We all have our own version of The Plan.

It exists in Plan Pods. There is the pod wherein I make a healthy but tasty dinner and everyone is grateful and happy. This pod rarely goes according to Plan.

There is the pod wherein we go to Raleigh, North Carolina to pitch new business and they don’t have a snow-ice storm that shuts down the city.

There are all kinds of Plans.

And they rarely go smoothly. Normally, I roll with it. I am above average at having the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Until… I reach that dreaded pocket of waiting.

My usual plan is try to outwit it.

This is easily achieved by extra preparation, additional initiatives and preventative measures. I am relentless in my pursuit of all. But despite ample diversionary tactics, there comes a time when things get quiet.

Still.

And fall-out from my future adventure crashes into my present. All the what if bad things happen scenarios kick in. And, it becomes crystal clear it is all completely out of my control.

Control is always an illusion.

But when you are spearheading your own adventure, illusion is essential. Otherwise, nothing gets done. So, you have to embrace the illusion while acknowledging that it is in fact an illusion while at the same time keeping the faith.

It’s kind of tricky triple-edged sword.

During these dreaded waiting times, I try to focus is on having the courage to change the things I can.

But change rarely happens on an ideal timetable.

And the spinning in an indeterminate infinity of seemingly random occurrences becomes a bit unbearable. It feels like being in a vertically stacked emotional bumper-to-bumper traffic jam.

Serenity feels about as serene as a crowded elevator with sneezing, coughing sick people. And wisdom has all the intelligence of ordering pizza from an iceberg in Antarctica.

So, not good.

That being said, when life gets choppy and rocky, we always do better when we ground ourselves in the rituals that have become family tradition.

As we dropped out boys at school this morning, we all set intentions.

Me: That I may focus on the adventure, even when sadness or dark spots creep in. Finn: To find the magic in himself and other people. Joe: To be calm, centered and open. Leo: To freeze whatever feels bad outside of him and return to what feels good.

In those moments we are the adventure. No waiting necessary.