I’m often asked the question: So what is a daring adventure?
I’m a half-full glass kind of gal and so most of the time I say that it’s just getting out of bed. Isn’t that the most daring adventure we can have each day? Realizing that each day is new.
A daring adventure doesn’t mean that we bunge jump ourselves off the highest cliff or travel to the ends of the earth (unless that’s what we choose). If we’re lucky we’ll have many many more getting out of bed adventures.
Thinking about the elements of a daring adventure, I’ve decided it’s like learning all over again. We grew up learning the 3 R’s of reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmatic. In midlife and in that pre-retirement stage, we’re challenged to learn a new set of R’s. The three that come to mind are Review, Retreat and Reinvent.
Re is a small prefix. It comes from the Latin and has two meanings: 1) used with the meaning “again” or “again and again” to indicate repetition, or 2) with the meaning “back” or “backward” to indicate withdrawal or backward motion. (Dictionary.com)
In midlife, I think the challenge is to hold both of these definitions of re’s in our minds and hearts. I’m looking at these three words of re, but I’m adding a hyphen to them to see how they can help on our daily daring adventures.
Re-View
Midlife is like turning the kaleidoscope of our life. It’s allowing all the little prisms that are held within the kaleidoscope to turn, to drop and become another amazing image.
We need to Re-View our life to see what might be possible. It doesn’t distract from what views we had before, but it allows for new insight into the possible. To have a daring adventure, one needs to Re-View one’s prior life and be selective on what we continue to see. Does the job still work? Does our eating make us healthy? Does that relationship enrich us? Re-viewing allows us to again and again look at our past and yet, challenges us to indicate withdrawing from pieces that no longer work.
Re-Treat
I come from a faith tradition that holds retreats. Before graduation from high school we had a retreat. It was a day of complete silence. (I bet the teachers loved that day). It was a day of contemplation for the seniors to think of the future.
I’ve come to understand retreats though as re-treats, again and again treating ourselves. A time to find out what in our lives does Re-treat us. Does the bubble bath invigorate? Would a massage regenerate our bodies? Would a walk in the woods provide our senses a treat?
Or do we Re-treat in the withdrawal sense, like armies, retreating into what we feel safe doing. Withdrawal from our norms, some re-treat away from the familiar and begin a daring adventure.
Re-Invent
It’s this word that has captured my attention. It culminates those times of review and retreat and moves me forward into what truly has been a daring adventure each day.
“Who am I?” is the quintessential question. I’m not a job title, I’ve held many of these from librarian to sales specialist to adjunct professor. Each of them has provided lessons for me about what truly is my core value. As each of the titles of my life fell away, there was a little death involved. A grief process that made me wonder who I was.
I learned that each title I introduced myself with is about information sharing. I love being able to share with others. It could be over a cup of coffee talking to a new friend about selling her home. It pained her to move. I suggested she could easily sell her house, it was selling her home that was the problem. But, she will always have her “home”, its within her.
It could be when someone says, what is ??? and I quickly reach for my phone. Having a library at my fingertips is incredible for this former librarian.
It could be my journaling each day, when I seek to talk to myself about what I’m learning.
Sharing information. That’s the key element for me and every day on this journey of my business, Life’s a Daring Adventure, I’m allowed to see how many ways I can do that.
Reinvention allows me to do that. So every day I become a spaghetti maker, and throw new ideas up onto the wall and see what sticks. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would create VirtualRetirementParties.com, make videos for colleagues, life coach folks looking for new positions and constantly seek new information, I would have laughed. Reinvention priceless.
So what is midlife about for you? Do you have a theme in your life? What is your daring adventure today? Please share as we explore together.
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