Tourist vs. Adventurer

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” -G. K. Chesterton

My initial thoughts stem from a conversation that I had the other night with a friend a couple of evenings ago. I was arguing that travelers are lame and that vagabonds/drifters/gypsies/nomads were much better. I mean, come on, they have a cooler name, they have a more adventuresome outlook on life, they’re counter-cultural, and the argument goes on and on. But this is not the case. I formally relinquish the defense of my previous perspective on this particular contention. The term traveler is an umbrella term, used to cover every type of person that moves from Point A to Point B. Thus, gypsies, vagabonds, drifters, and nomads are types of travelers. All gypsies/vagabonds/drifters/nomads are adventurers; but not all travelers are adventurers. After all, there are those dreadful lot that we call tourists. With that, I think that we all can agree on one more thing: tourists suck.

A tourist has a plan. A tourist goes to the Grand Canyon to see the Grand Canyon, the hawks, the sunrise and sunset, to hike a couple short hikes, etc. There’s not much to be said about the tourist. He will have pictures at the end of his trip but his experience is radically different from the traveler, the adventurer.

The traveler is an adventurer. What he sees is his adventure. There are no plans, no agendas, no pretenses, no expectations. Everything that happens is the adventure. The traveler will see the Canyon, the hawks, the sunrise and sunset. But that’s not all he’ll experience. The traveler’s travels are more than what meets the eye. Oh, yes! The traveler experiences the road, feels the Canyon, is the sunset. There is a perfect union between the experiencer and the experienced. In fact, the individual becomes the experience!

Have you ever gone to Colorado with no plan? Have you gone on a date with no idea where you’ll be taken? Have you ever just gotten in a car and drove? Have you closed your eyes but stayed awake for ten minutes? Have you ever seriously tried to pray in silence by yourself to a God? Be honest: have you ever really felt alive?

The more I think about it, the more I think that adventuring is a mind set. I reckon that it's possible to go on a planned adventure. But in order for it to be an adventure you must be willing for the plan to change, adapt to the circumstances, add to, take away from. An adventure is adventuresome only if the adventurer does not constrict himself to an agenda that could potentially jip him out of another adventure.

It all comes down to the fact that a person really just needs to experience life on a minutely basis. Was there a moment today that you were unconscious of what you were doing? Was there a time today when you slipped into a typical pattern? Was there a time today when you were on auto-mode? Was there a time today when you were a zombie that just went through the motions? These are all signs of tourism. Be alive; be an adventurer.

Passion.

...My favorite word in the English language. There are several reasons for this:  Its phonetics and etymology are perfect. It carries such a strong emotion. It is unbelievably universal, applicable to thousands of situations. It just rolls off the tongue. Lastly and most importantly, nothing can be accomplished successfully without passion. I believe passion to be the most intense word in our language.

    My good friends may read this and say, “Josh, I thought ‘chimney’ was your favorite word...?” Well, at one time it was but this is not true anymore. Passion. The word has everything a good word needs, like: a double letter (ss), a “sion” sound, the best vowels “a”, “i”, “o”. The word passion has a demanding tone which instantly prompts imagery and triggers immediate interests. The word carries so much gravity in our society that when somebody begins to talk about passion, you know the topic is serious. It packs a punch.

    Passion can be used in virtually every circumstance. Sports, dreams, performances, in reference to a strong love, a movement, an interest, and suffering. Passion signifies an acute admiration. Passions are a spark inside that motivate you to act on what fires you up. For me, it seems that passion is deeper than love. Love has not lost meaning and has become so commonplace of a word that is thrown around and thus, losing its value. Think of the things you can do with passion: play football with passion, act with passion, love someone with great passion, and be passionately interested in something.

The greatest passion is not one of human origin, but the Divine Passion. The word passion comes from the Latin word patior, meaning to suffer or endure. The greatest display humanity has ever seen is most often recognized as “The Passion”. There was more love than is able to be comprehended by any human mind, in the act of Christ’s death. And what do we call it? The Passion. He did what had to be done with passion. He suffered and endured for His overwhelming love for sinners...with passion.

    A passion is an immaterial substance in your heart and soul that compels you to do what will fulfill what you have a deep internal love for. There is a reason that passion is talked about by your parents, your coaches, your teachers and everybody else that care about you. It's because passions are easily the most important things in this world. What is life without a motivation? What is the meaning of anything if we have no excitement for what could be? And what are motivations and potentials worth, if we don’t follow through on them? And then what is the point in doing anything without zeal, without passion?! Passion is the solitary force that brings a much deeper meaning to our lives and makes our achievements worth more than just accomplishments.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German Idealist and a major influence in Marxism (in other words, a very influential philosopher and political theorist), said, “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.” I completely and 100% agree with Hegel. To be great you must find passion. You must desire beyond any love to fulfill your dreams. Invite passion into your life. Find passion in the small things and you will accomplish the great things.

Dreams.

Nobody knows for sure what they are. There are scientific postulations about what dreams are but at the end of the day there is no conclusive evidence for what they may be. Figments of our imagination? Possibly. Repressed thoughts? Possibly. Desires or aspirations? Possibly. Chemical firings within the brain? Possibly.

The fact stands that I am not yet a psychologist, a neurologist, or any kind of doctor at all. But what I am is a Dreamer. I can tell you that a dream is something that ought to be chased. I have no idea as to what a dream is or what they mean but I can suspect that they contain some element of truth or insight that is worth pursuing.

In my humble and unprofessional opinion, a dream is a motive in which our interior self (the self that is fearless) is positively influencing the culturally-influenced conscious self that carries the “That’s impossible” mentality. A modest British Army soldier of WWI, T. E. Lawrence, said,

    “Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

It was “impossible” for Lawrence to have led a successful revolt against the great Ottoman Empire. It was “impossible” for man to walk on water. It was “impossible” for that cancer patient who was given six months, to live 16 more years. It was “impossible” for man to get to the moon. It was “impossible” for any human being to consume 68 hot dogs and buns in ten minutes. But behind every conquered “impossible” feat lies a dream.

As Lawrence said, we become “dangerous men” when our dreams take form in the physical world. Our “impossible” desires become completely realistic if we can ever find the interior strength, commonly known as “guts” to pursue that which has been regarded as not possible. I am willing to make a bold statement in saying that the minute we are able to trust in our fearless self and do the undareable, go far out on a limb, and just try then we can better know ourselves and perhaps achieve the “impossible”.

Don’t be afraid to dream. Test the unknown waters. Dream with eyes wide open.

I'll leave you with this, Rodgers and Hammerstein said, "Impossible things are happening everyday." Believe it.