Adventure, Rediscovered

“I will drink life to the lees…”

Tennyson, Ulysses

The other day I set out on the annual Sisyphean task of leaf-blowing the driveway. We are blessed to live under a canopy of mature oak and maple; sweetgum and hickory. In November, as the temperatures drop, the leaves start to fall. A dense carpet of deciduous offerings quickly inundates every last inch of yard and driveway alike. Several years ago, after learning the hard way that a rake will not suffice, I went out and purchased a heavy-duty leaf blower and this has made the task tolerable, though still somewhat maddening, as I blow leaves off the driveway almost as fast as they fall upon it.

This year, I found myself pleasantly surprised as my six-year-old son decided to come outside and join his father in the leaf clearing. He was, unlike myself, undaunted by the enormity of the job, and had grabbed the old rake to help. He smiled at me exuberantly before setting to work and I had to laugh at his natural joy. Here was an enormous task he clearly seemed to relish and fully expected to complete. Unfortunately, however, while I tried to avoid him with the leaf blower, he would invariably sneak up on me and then run away when dust got into his eyes. I cut the engine and cautioned him to try and stay away from the business end of the blower. He looked dejected as he went and sat on the porch before informing me that he was heading in because his eyes were bothering him. He turned to go, and I figured he’d had enough of raking leaves for one day.

I returned to my task only to see him run out of the house two minutes later, grinning wildly, this time with his swim goggles on. I had to admit that it was a clever solution and so I told him it was “time to rake!” His joy in the work made the time pass quickly and, later that evening, I found myself reflecting on the happiness he had brought to, not only the otherwise mind-numbing job at hand, but to me individually as well. What was it about raking an inordinate amount of leaves that had made him so excited?

It couldn’t have been the work itself, for getting him to perform other more mundane jobs, such as cleaning up the living room or setting the table, was often a Herculean undertaking in and of itself. I didn’t think it was necessarily the opportunity of working with me either, although that may have played a role in this particular case (the massive leaf blower on my back is pretty cool and really very loud, and it would appear that little boys love loud equipment). No, it dawned on me, it was the enormity of the job itself. For my son, here was a quest. Could he do it? The fact that the job seemed insurmountable was not a dispiriting element but rather an aspect of the work that appealed to him immensely. This was no mere setting of the silverware! There were thousands upon thousands of leaves to move!

It seemed like the near-impossibility of success was what drove him to want to help me more than anything else. For boys are like that. They want to set out on grand adventures and to be the heroes of their own stories. I remember that feeling well and I had to grin as I thought of my other, younger son, three years old now, who mournfully observed us working from the sunroom window-unable to participate yet, but willing, even if not able, to pitch in.

Falling leaves, especially in even-numbered years, also remind me of election season and we have recently concluded an interminable one. Both campaigns were very blunt about casting the other as beyond the pale and an existential threat to the country. In this fraught moment, the simple act of voting assumed the posture of a moral act rather than merely an important civic duty. It was also, we were told, over and over again, an election that was breaking down into fault lines. Divisions of race, class, and education, sure, but importantly, as I was insistently reminded, divisions of sex. Men were for Trump. Women for Harris. I will let pollsters and political professionals delve into the validity of these types of sweeping generalizations as the election data is inevitably studied as intently as the flights of birds or the entrails of animals were in ancient times. Yet, it is true that men generally, and young men specifically, are not thriving. Whether it be economic stagnation, suicide rates, alcohol abuse, or fentanyl overdoses, men are not doing well. To give the election sex-divergence theory its due, the Trump campaign especially seemed to lean in where it counted with men-with podcasts they listen to and with associations with visionaries and risk-takers such as Elon Musk, who campaigned with Trump while simultaneously landing rockets safely into humungous mechanical arms he designed to “catch” them in once they returned home safe and sound from outer space. Meanwhile, at one of his many rallies in July, in Butler, PA, Trump himself was nearly assassinated before standing up and pumping his fist to an impassioned crowd who thought him injured or dead. Whatever one thinks of him, here is a man who appears to be in the midst of an adventure.

To wit, I would like to make the curious observation surrounding this particular election cycle that there seemed to be the feeling of adventure suddenly wafting about in the atmosphere again. Adventure, from the Latin, ad (toward or to) and venire (to come), is rooted in the idea of coming toward, or approaching, a thing. But just what is it that we are collectively approaching? It seems that we are on the cusp of both great opportunities and great challenges. The next frontier of outer space is finally beckoning after decades of apparent stagnation. Will this generation return to the Moon, to Mars, or even beyond our galactic neighborhood? AI both captures our imagination and terrifies us. It is the inevitable next step, and we have already begun down that hazy, scary road. Will we unlock new potential or trigger Armageddon? Are we ready for all this? Along with adventure, there is a peculiar and associated angst that feels as if it has been injected into the national zeitgeist; a premonition of anticipation. Quiet conversations are being had across the nation, and likely beyond, as we steel our nerves for the adventures, perhaps wondrous and beautiful, or perhaps sublime and terrible, that appear to be barreling toward us.

In my line of work in the emergency department I see more and more anxiety and anxiety-related complaints every year. In one sense, this is a natural part of the job for to be a patient in the emergency department often means being injured, sick, scared that you could be very sick or that a loved one is. Anxiety has always been omnipresent within the corridors of the ER. Yet, it seems to have reached an astonishing and almost overwhelming pitch. To even perform a cursory literature search is to see increasing levels of anxiety across the spectrum. From 1992-2001, emergency visits for anxiety increased from 3.5 to 5.0 visits/1000 ER visits. (1) According to CDC data, this increased among adults between the years 2017-2019 to 14.4 visits/1000 total visits and, astonishingly, but definitely noticeably, among children between 2018 and 2021 to 14 visits/1000 total pediatric visits. (2, 3)

This depressing data encapsulates the panic attacks, self-cutting behavior, and other overt manifestations of anxiety that we see, but we also take care of substance abuse, anxiety-related chest pain or abdominal pain or other somatic manifestations of profound anxiety, palpitations, suicide attempts, the unruly child, and many other more subtle expressions of this concerning and pervasive psychopathology. Sadly, the data from our collective COVID-19 experience is only now starting to become available however anecdotally it seems that rates of anxiety and anxiety-adjacent conditions have only continued to skyrocket.

So it would appear that both existential angst and an intangible spirit of a coming adventure are both in the air simultaneously, like two sides of a spiritual coin. Perhaps the one must come loaded with the other, as a sort of Faustian pact. While my thoughts are, as always, my own, and while I hope I may be proven wrong over the course of time, I do ironically worry about all of the worrying. Simultaneously however, I hope that the hint of courage and embracement of the spirit of adventure that I also detect in the culture may prevail as we strive forward into an unknown, but also unwritten, future. That is my hope, anyway.

After all, people everywhere, and Gen Z especially, seem to be looking up and taking their bearings-preparing to do great and astonishing things. I sense, in this new spirit of adventure, a realization that perhaps soon, within the next decade even, the next generation will lead the charge and cross the vast expanse of space in search of colonizing new planets and creating new frontiers; that they will lead this country into the 22^nd century; that they will be great and that the dreams they’ve harbored quietly, deep within their breasts, might be risky but might, at the end of it all, be worth it.

For life, as it turns out, is an adventure and adventures are full of wonder. This can both alarm and amaze and lead to dread or courage-or possibly both. As Aristotle noted in his Metaphysics 982 b 12 ff, “it is owing to wonder that men both now begin, and at first began, to philosophize.’ Plato in Theaetetus 155 D notes that “wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.” From where I sit, there is a reenchantment in the air, and, like water vapor, I can feel it. It is wonder full. It’s humid and daunting and shakes us loose a little but it’s also beautiful and poignant to consider, and hiding within that beauty is truth, and within that truth, goodness. As such, beauty serves as a sacred road, a via pulchritudinis, to the good-and if we choose to take that road it may be a little unsettling and anxiety-provoking, but it’s also the adventure we were born to bear. In a strange kind of way, our adventures not only pull us from our comfortable homes but hopefully bring us back there again, to the same warm hearth, yes, but with a fuller vision of what it means to be home and of what it means to be human.

Finally, in consideration of pursuing this spirit of adventure I found myself thinking about Dr. Alexander Chula’s beautiful little book, Goodbye, Dr. Banda, a work I would commend to anyone interested in the nation of Malawi, medicine, colonialism, and classics, all topics of deep interest to me. In it, he describes what the British Colonial Office looked for in the last generation of men sent to live and work in the far-flung corners of the empire, often for decades or even a lifetime, far from the comforts of their misty English homeland. They sought men who were “’fully susceptible of guidance in the best interests of the country and its people’” and who could “’guide them with sympathy and foresight’” into “’political consciousness.’” Specifically, they looked for men of “’patience, tolerance, humor, integrity, tenacity of purpose-the administrative officer must be, quite simply, a good man.’”

So, shall we, in the present era, respond to the angst that surely exists or to the beauty of the spirit of adventure, that, like the other side of the coin, exists necessarily as well? These thoughts have been with me for some months now as I have been thinking of my family, and especially my boys. How can I steer them away from our more recent malaise and toward a future life of wonder and adventure? Perhaps now, with the election finally behind us, we can start to look forward toward that future which is inevitably coming. I’m not so much interested in any particular tax policy that may or may not be undertaken, as important as that may be, nor any energy policy, economic instrument, or government overhaul that may occur, necessary as these too all may be. No, instead I find myself primarily hopeful that America might still be a place where my boys can have big, crazy, scary, insane, and importantly, beautiful dreams-and dare to chase them, not just as men, but as good men, searching for excellence, truth, and the summum bonum, the highest good, through the beauty of the adventure that is their lives. For if there must be dragons, and there will be, let us build a nation of dragon-slayers, and in the process, a nation built on truth, goodness and the beauty of the adventure of life.

1) J Clin Psychiatry. 2008 Feb;69(2):286-94.

2) QuickStats: Rates of Emergency Department Visits Related to Mental Health Disorders Among Adults Aged ≥18 Years, by Disorder Category — National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, United States, 2017–2019. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2022;71:186.

3) Santo L, Peters ZJ, David D, DeFrances CJ. Emergency department visits related to mental health disorders among children and adolescents: United States, 2018-2021. National Health Statistics Reports; no 191. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2023.