The great playwright, Oscar Wilde, once said, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist.” Truer words have probably never been uttered. Most of us spend the majority of our existence just existing. We wake up early and spend most of our conscious hours at a job we tolerate (at best), and then go home and turn our brains off in front of the TV until we go to sleep. Rinse and repeat.
What if we started living? What if we made our wildest dreams a reality? There are a hundred and fifty reasons why you don’t have time or money to have a great adventure, but in 20 years those reasons won’t matter anymore. Meanwhile, the memories of your adventures will linger forever.
The time to start living is now. Get out a pen and paper and make a list of adventures you want to have, and then start checking them off. Make sure these things are on your list:
- Get some scuba gear and swim with the fish.
If you’ve ever had the dream that you can fly, you can imagine the incredible sensation of scuba diving. The oxygen provided by your scuba gear gives you the limitless freedom to soar through the water in a weightless state, exactly as you would if you could fly. While you can put on your scuba gear and get certified in a swimming pool, it would be an infinity time more thrilling to experience in the company of exotic fish. Or sharks! - Strap a parachute to your back and jump out of an airplane. What better way is there to defy the boundaries of life than free-falling from a height of thousands of feet above the earth? The exhilaration of the wind hitting your face as the tiny trees below are hurling towards you will give you a rush of adrenaline that you will never find elsewhere.
- Load up your backpacking gear and soak up the great outdoors.
There are a million and fifty ways to soak up every drop of adventure that life offers on a backpacking adventure. Your camping checklist should include hiking gear, climbing gear, and — if it’s your cup of tea — fishing or hunting gear, to catch your dinner. - Hit the road Jack!
You need to travel. Getting a front row ticket to countries and cultures completely foreign to your own will make you question everything you thought was normal. Certainly visit the great tourist attractions — the Eiffel Tower, Buckingham Palace, the Pyramids, and the Great Wall of China. There is a reason that millions of people flock to them every year.But don’t miss out on experiencing vibrant customs that aren’t in your tourist brochure. Sip a latte in a classic cafe in a little French town. Visit the ancient English island where monks still make mead in the same way their Viking ancestors did. Celebrate the Dia de los Muertos in an obscure village of Mexico. The experiences you’ll have will halt your existence and make you start living, in the rarest way.
Do you have an adventure that really made you start living for the first time? Please share it with us in the comment section below.
