Your great adventure

My favorite genre is adventure.

My favorite adventure movies are Forrest Gump, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

To me, they encompass what a true adventure should be.

What do you think of when you hear adventure?

Dragons, a mountainous task or Journey, a deep valley one must escape, a trap, a trip to find yourself or the one true love?

Those all make a great adventure, but in the end, at least to me, a great adventure ends with the person learning something great.

Be it bad or good, they learned something, either about themselves, another person, or life or anything that makes their life deeper and more wise or enlightened.

In both those movies the protagonist or lead character (since there necessarily wasn't an antagonist) is fit for that adventure, Forrest could run and save his fellow soldiers, he learned how to run a successful shrimpin' business. Walter Mitty knew how to longboard down that road, he had the leader in him to track down who he needed.

(If you haven't seen either movie, sorry, but this will make sense)

Everyone has an adventure, their own adventure, and I don't mean the crazy trip you took to Mexico, or the flat tire on the highway.

I mean the daily grind adventure, the addiction you want to quit, the family struggles you seem to be crushed by, the job you just got that you feel unqualified for, the self inflicting pain, the drowning of sorrows in whatever is near. Raising kids and handling their stress when you can't handle your own, knowing that if you don't succeed, and if you don't get that job, your family with suffer financial hardship.

The adventure of living your life is the stuff of great adventures.

I'm not saying they are all bad, but to me an adventure has a testing part, the crucible, when you see what you are made of, and hopefully in the end, Gold shines through. No matter how small or huge it may seem to other people, it's your adventure, it's what you are going through.

We all need a little kick sometimes, a little motivation, or spurring on, something or someone to help ignite us to conquer that obstacle and come out on the other side.

Here is to your adventure...

Slay your dragons and beasts, climb the tallest mountain, crawl from the deepest valley, go and fight for your adventures end, for that gold you know you can achieve. Find what you are looking for, nail the job, tell that special someone what you need to say, put down the knife, the drugs and the bottle, go live.

Go live your great adventure, because nobody can live it for you.

We all have that something great inside, and for me Eric James, it's the Lions roar in my heart.

What's yours?

You can do this, I'm pulling for you.