The real adventure

You don’t always get the flavor of growth that you wanted.

On October 1, 2021, Tyler set out in his sailboat, Kainui, to circumnavigate the globe. Their journey together ended on the coast of North Carolina a few months later when she was damaged beyond repair, but Tyler kept going.

Yesterday, we got word that a friend of ours, Tyler, had passed away.

Tyler died in a diving accident in Indonesia. Which, not to be flippant about a tragedy, is exactly what I would have imagined.

The world has lost a person who knew how to live fearlessly and joyfully. Tyler was a passionate adventurer who loved traveling, learning, and challenging himself. He was always testing his limits, not just for the sake of a thrill, but for his growth as a person. He lived a full life in half a lifespan. Boy, will I miss him.

The flavor of adventure in my life over the past few years has been very different from that of Tyler’s. While he was traveling the world, I was settling down in my home state and becoming a mother.

What I’ve tried to do, even in the midst of dirty diapers and middle-of-the-night wakeups, is to see the experience as an adventure that I chose. To embrace parenthood as the journey of learning and growth that it ultimately is.

For me, finding adventure in the mundane is harder than finding adventure on the other side of the planet. The pain of the mundane is where a lot of my growth has come from. I can’t escape into new experiences the way I used to or explore intriguing ideas. Well, I can, but they are not the new experiences or intriguing ideas of my choosing. They happen within significant constraints.

At times I’ve been frustrated and disappointed with myself for being bored or understimulated. And then, on top of that, I’ve been frustrated and disappointed with myself for not finding creative solutions for the problem of being bored or understimulated.

Tyler was the kind of person who could stand outside of his life and make the kind of bold choice that a screenwriter would make for a protagonist. Why not become a freelance software developer? Why not live off the grid? Why not learn to build wooden boats? Why not cycle around the world? Why not sail around the world? Why not go to Turkey to get a hair transplant? Why not go freediving in Indonesia?

This ability is more than action for the sake of action, though. It’s a worldview based in possibility and perspective. There are many component skills:

Seeing money as merely a tool (ironically, making it easier to acquire).

Connecting immediately and authentically with people of all kinds.

Maintaining a kind of nonattachment not just to possessions, but also people, places, and even your own identity.

Not taking things too seriously, yet earnestly investing in skills and relationships over time.

Being able to participate fully in life while also recognizing that everything is temporary and most if it is out of our control.

I have aspired to that attitude, and I even thought I was doing pretty well. That is why it has been so strange to find myself...listless. How did I get here? Why can’t I see the joy and meaning in this moment?

A few weeks ago, asking myself these questions, the truth suddenly walloped me with such force that I burst into tears of relief.

I realized: That’s it. That’s the game. You want “I hiked up a mountain” hard, or “launch a business” hard, or “write a hit song” hard. You want deeply stimulating, novel, juicy problems that transform you and your life from having solved them.

And what you get is “sit here for an hour without looking at my phone” hard — which is compounded by “the pain of realizing that you’re not as actualized as you thought you were” hard.

That’s the opportunity. I can deepen my spiritual and philosophical practice not just by operating in alignment with my true self, but also by exposing the ways in which I don’t — or even can’t — and finding new reserves of compassion and equanimity.

What Tyler’s journey and mine have in common is that the adventure you think you’re going on gives way to the real adventure.

For me, as of right now, that deeper adventure seems to be accepting my imperfections and nudging myself gently toward my ideals — holding the duality of “you’re okay just the way you are, and you’ve got some work to do.”

I thought I had that one. I teach that one. But there’s always more. Of course there’s more.

For Tyler, the real adventure, put simply, is death. Of course he knew it was a possibility. But he obviously wasn’t seeking it.

And I wonder what that experience is like. Maybe you go, “Oh! It’s time for this? I wasn’t expecting this. I thought I had more work to do over there.”

But in that moment of peace and surrender, you accept the next stage in the journey. Maybe standing slightly outside of yourself, with affection for the person you were and a bit of amusement about what you thought your life was about.

Tyler did really well with that in life. I’m sure he is mastering death, also, with his usual enthusiasm and joy.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep working on it.

Rest easy, friend.

P.S. I wrote another essay inspired by Tyler back in 2021.