I have a bunch of books on my nightstand and on my kindle.
If I feel a bit stuck on an issue, or if I need an outside point of view on something I will pick whichever book speaks to me.
Books are amazing because they are filled with another persons blood, sweat, and tears, about an idea. They are written through their lens and life experience, which is usually very different from our own. Being immersed into someone else’s worldview can’t help but expand our own. It’s the cheapest way to an education, a new way of thinking, and therapy.
This morning I picked up Tools of the Titans by Tim Ferriss. It’s a monster of a book and it’s great for this excercise because the content is golden nuggets from his podcast of the amazing people he interviews and it’s categorized into healthy, wealthy, and wise.
I hold the book closed and look at the pages, usually one area pops out at me and I turn to that page and start reading.
Every single time I stumble across something that pertains exactly to an issue which has popped up in my life, this morning was no exception.
Tim had just asked Sebastian Junger what advice his 70 year old self would give his current self, and this was his answer.
“The world is this continually unfolding set of possibilities and opportunities, and the tricky thing about life is on one hand having the courage to enter into things that are unfamiliar, but also having the wisdom to stop exploring when you have found something worth sticking around for. That is true of a place, of a person, of a vocation. Balancing these two things – the courage of exploring, and the commitment to staying – and getting the ratio right is very hard. I think my 70-year-old self would say: ‘be careful that you don’t err on one side or the other because you have an ill-conceived idea of who you are’.” – Sebastian Junger
I consider myself an adventurer.
I love to try new things and have new experiences. I live for variety and adventure.
I only just realized this about myself a couple of years ago. My daughter, who is the exact opposite of me, is completely miserable when I bring her along on a new adventure and I couldn’t understand why because adventure lights me up. The second time we do it, she’s happy and excited and I’m bored and disengaged.
I am one extreme of what Junger is speaking to, and my daughter is the other. Without this duality, I wouldn’t have realized that not everyone is like me in this way.
I have spent the past couple of weeks rehashing a part of my youth.
This isn’t something I typically do as I don’t find hanging out in the past to be a very productive excercise… but circumstances arose that forced me back to 20+ years ago.
I could see this adventurous side of myself has been dominant in many scenarios and I unintentionally hurt people, and myself, because of it.
My adventurous self took me down a long detour of choosing people and vocations, who appeared to bring adventure with them, only to find it was a very unstable and painful way to live.
Reading this quote this morning has me considering the times I could satisfy my need for adventure while balancing it with the stability of staying.
I am just realizing we all have a tendency to lean one way or the other, and we all need a balance of both.
Balance is always key, and very hard to attain.
Which way do you lean?