I met Allen Johnson on the dance floor at the American-Czechoslovakian Club on Valley Street in East Dayton. He put out his hand with a grin as the accordion player belted out yet another Polka. Later, we’d struck up conversation and he told me about his latest book.
Allen has written 27 books – one for each of the major worldwide adventures he’s tackled in his lifetime. As the inside jacket of his latest book outlines, Allen has chased polar bears across the Canadian Arctic, ridden camels across the Australian Outback, swam with sharks in Mexico, bicycled across Sweden (yes, I said across), and jogged the Great Wall of China, among dozens of other adventures.
Allen is 83 years old. I saw him last week during a dance lesson and his grin once again lit up the room. He exudes youthfulness, an eagerness to learn, and a readiness to tackle new experiences. Even taking on a difficult step in hustle, he glowed with determination.
Allen is a true adventurer. But what makes him an adventurer, I realized as I contemplated later, is not necessarily his amazing exploits. It is his attitude, his willingness to embrace the unknown, his curiosity and optimism that something good and exciting lies just beyond the next bend.
I see that same spirit in my six-year-old nephew Matthew – a deep well of excitement and curiosity about life, coupled with a hell-or-high-water courage that is overwhelmingly contagious.
But Allen and Matthew aren’t the only people with an adventurous spirit. I believe we all have one, deep inside. It’s that little voice that says, “Ooh, let’s try this and see what happens.” It’s the quiet, curious, courageous voice that can be drowned out so easily by fear.
I know a little something about being drowned out by fear.
Twelve years ago on a cold February day, I had my first panic attack on the 11th floor of the Riffe Building in downtown Columbus. It would be the first of hundreds.
Most people who know me today would never guess this, and I don’t talk about it very often. But at 19 years old, I came close to spending the rest of my life as a house-bound agoraphobic. I spent nearly a year afraid of driving, afraid of being out in public, afraid of going anywhere. After working a full-time political job and commuting to Columbus every day, I found myself frozen, and crying, just trying to go to the store.
The more I avoided doing things, the harder and harder they became. I watched helplessly as my life shrunk before my eyes, as I became a shell of who I was. And eventually, the fear settled into my first major depression.
I have my Dad to thank, more than anyone, for helping me push back against the fear. He got me to leave the house when I felt like I couldn’t, even driving me to a job interview at the Times-Gazette newspaper, where I was hired on the spot, officially ending my house-bound days.
Adventure is about attitude. It’s about pushing the fear back by a couple feet, kicking out the boundaries of your own life, taking more ground today than you had yesterday. It’s about embracing life with hope and optimism.
I started driving again. I got up every day, got dressed, and went to work. Early on, sometimes I cried, it was so hard. The fear pushed me, taunted me, tricked me. I spent whole days feeling like a clammy, shaking, pale mess. But I pushed back.
That was 12 years ago. I look back with immense gratitude that I did not shut out life the way I could have back then. But it hasn’t always been easy. The anxiety and panic attacks haven’t entirely stopped. I’ve just learned how to tackle life anyway.
What matters, I remind myself and smile, is that in the battlefield with fear I’m always taking ground.
There is much that I could write about fear, how it lies, how it manipulates, how it paralyzes. But we’ve all dealt with fear. We know exactly how it works. In a way, all of us live on that battlefield; all of us let fear dictate our choices sometimes.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about adventure, and about what it means to live adventurously. And I’ve realized that adventure isn’t about what you do, but rather who you are. It’s about whether you embrace the unknown, whether you look ahead with optimism, whether you push back when fear pushes you.
In the last 19 days, I’ve climbed 45-foot rocks, swam in waterfalls, hiked after dark, slept outside and spent a day building a house, among other adventures.
I haven’t swam with sharks in Mexico or jogged the Great Wall of China like Allen has, but that’s not really what adventure is truly about.
When Allen and I talked the other day, he said, “You don’t have to travel the world to have experiences. Start here.”
That’s what my October challenge, 31 Adventures, is all about. It’s just embracing the spirit of adventure in small but new ways.
Adventure is about attitude. It’s about pushing the fear back by a couple feet, kicking out the boundaries of your own life, taking more ground today than you had yesterday. It’s about embracing life with hope and optimism.
And when you take on that attitude, when you start with small adventures, you find your life expanding around you. And an expansive life, I’m sure Allen would agree, is the biggest adventure of all.