Go big or go home
I was watching The Adventures of Tintin, and as I struggled to keep my 3D glasses from sliding down my nose, I thought, this is how life should be. That is, we should live it without losing a sense of wonder for all things. Life should be regarded as an exciting journey, as one big escapade made up of valuable lessons to learn, fears to conquer, skills to develop, relationships to build, mysteries to unlock, and treasures to be discovered.
It’s fascinating how children are naturally in awe with life and the world around them. But sadly, some lose this sense of wonder as they grow older. When kids are not allowed to play and explore because, “mud is dirty, magkaka-bulate ka” or “if you go there, spiders will get you”, and when they’re told, “don’t run or else you’ll fall down”, “don’t play in the rain, you’ll get sick”, “don’t go under the sun, iitim at mag-aamoy araw ka na, magkaka-kuto ka pa”, the seed of fear is planted and one’s interest to engage with the world is snuffed out.
Have you ever seen a teenager who despite his being young seems old, because this person has lost the appetite to learn and try something new? But then, there are also those people who are certainly not getting any younger, but somehow, still manage to maintain that youthful aura about them (and I’m not talking about mid-life crisis here.) To give an example, a few years back, my two grandmothers (Nanay Bella in her 80s and Lola Aurelia in her 90s) asked if I could lend them my old music books because they wanted to learn how to play the piano so that they could add something different to their otherwise monotonous day. Imagine that. Stepping out of our comfort zones to widen our horizons doesn’t necessarily require us to jump off a plane or a building. To quote from Leo Tolstoy, “Life is truly lived when tiny changes occur.”
Tintin: “How’s your thirst for adventure?” Captain Haddock: “Unquenchable!” The new Tintin movie didn’t stay true to the plot of The Secret of the Unicorn, my favorite among all of Hergé’s comics. Instead, they pasted together bits and pieces from several Tintin stories and created a new screenplay — a bit disappointing but hey, at least they took a risk, right? Despite that, I still enjoyed the film because I was really able to identify myself with the protagonist. Lately, I’ve been pushing my limitations and going from one adventure to another. Just last month, I was able to finally overcome my fear of deep water which I’ve had since childhood by going whitewater rafting, surfing and scuba-diving (I’m looking forward to getting my diving certification this month. I’m still a bad swimmer though, but I’ll work on that!)
Now I’m doing all these things, but to tell you the truth, I used to be a scaredy-cat. I didn’t like taking risks and always stayed “safe”. I stuck around the same places, and spent time with the usual people. I never deviated off course nor went out of my way in the name of adventure. I also worried too much about things going wrong. But my mindset was transformed when I felt that I had drawn a border around me, cutting me away from the rest of the ever-developing world. In the movie, Captain Haddock says, “You hit a wall, you push through it.” I know that when he said this, he was talking about determination which is another topic. But I have different interpretation of the line: Hitting a wall means it’s time for an expansion. Whatever space you’re in now has gotten too small and too limited for the ever-evolving you. How do you truly move forward in life unless you stretch beyond that which you already know? When you feel stagnant as a river stone, heavy and paralyzed compared to the lively flow around you, have courage and break yourself free from that state. Embrace the infinite possibilities brought by the unknown. In other words, shed your river-stone ways and allow yourself not to merely ride the current---but to surge and become that river.
The Secret of the Unicorn is one of the key volumes out of the 24 Tintin books created by Hergé. As they say, the bigger the risk, the richer the experience, and the richer the experience, the deeper the learning. And to learn is to live, just as living is learning. Helen Keller once declared, “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” Eleanor Roosevelt believed “We should do the very thing we think we cannot do.” Robert F. Kennedy dreamed of things that never were and when asked why, his reply was, “Why not?” Indeed, when life becomes too predictable, when every day consists of merely getting by, why not venture out of our familiar little circles? Like Tintin, let’s consciously live life as the great adventure that it actually is.
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