Can We Talk 2

Who Lives A Boring Life?

         Okay not every day is exciting and rewarding.

         But most of our lives are full of adventure. Going off to college, especially in a new town, is an adventure. A new job can be an adventure, maybe a bad one. Getting married, getting divorced. Having children. Becoming an empty nester or becoming the caretaker of an aging parent, particularly if any type of dementia is involved. Retiring can be an adventure. We can have medical adventures, although we don't usually choose those. It all depends on how you look at things.

         I was in a group when we discussed that very thing. It started with all of us reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Like it or not, we've had adventures. Some actually went to foreign countries. One person had been homeless for a while, and is still in temporary housing. I thought of being a live-in houseparent at a children's home for kids from broken homes. Talk about adventures!

         Then there are childhood adventures, like we explored unknown terrain. Or maybe we got lost in the woods and grown-ups had to search for us. Or we built a fort out of scrap material on the river bank. My brother recalls an adventure that thrilled him at the time (half a century ago). He had gotten hurt sledding downhill into a layer of ice. We took him to the doctor's office. The doctor went out the back door with him, got in a jeep with the top down and sped off to the hospital to put stitches in his lip, with snow and ice and cold wind all around them. They came back to the office. My mother never knew they had left. The fright and pain he had felt was erased by the thrill ride with his buddy doctor.

         Some adventures lead us to do volunteer work for the joy of it. Life may not turn out the way you would have scripted it, but boring? Hardly ever.