After celebrating another birthday July 30, I thought about what it is that keeps me going. In a large part, it’s still maintaining a little sense of adventure and still being excited by small discoveries.
Little adventures are what you used to do when you were a kid. I remember wandering behind our house, turning over rocks to see what was underneath them. Discovering a spider’s web or finding a piece of quartz and pretending it was a diamond. Fishing in a little pond catching “sunnies” or chasing frogs and turtles. Everything then was new. Even things that now seem insignificant were tremendously exciting
I reconnected with that feeling of adventure, searching for the Rio Capulin in the Jemez Mountains. I found it on a map and once there, didn’t let myself be disappointed by the initial finding of a very small stream. When I was young, it didn’t matter how big or small the stream. Youth can get a kick out of dropping a little stick or a piece of plastic into an irrigation ditch and then chasing it as it floats away.
I got a kick out of exploring down that little stream, seeing what pools may lie ahead. Discovering that the stream was populated with wild rainbow trout added to the sense of adventure. It was a very satisfying day.
As you get older, your horizons broaden. You think about seeing bigger rivers and catching bigger fish. That’s just a natural progression. Children dream of becoming a wide range of professions as they grow. Around this time, they start getting involved in organized sports. This is fine, but it needs to be balanced with learning about the world they live in. Their interests should be broadening because there is so much to know.
That’s what’s worrying me about the amount of time young adults are spending in organized sports activities. Sports are great for opening up the world and letting youth discover their physical abilities, but it’s not the game itself that’s important. It’s the learning that goes with it that is. When the game becomes more important than the learning, something is out of balance. The game becomes something that limits imagination, rather than expanding it. When sports becomes self indulgent, it closes doors rather than opens them.
Only a select few will make a living playing sports. If all or nearly all of a someone’s childhood has been spent learning and participating in sports, what happens when that goes away. It seems to me that a lot of them lose interest in learning. Sports is always touted as a way to keep children out of trouble, but for many it ceases to fulfill that role as they age.
When I was younger, seeing pictures in magazines or books triggered that sense of wonder and wanting to see. It still does. With television and now the internet, the opportunities to learn are nearly limitless. It amazes me that with the wealth of information that’s available on all these resources, giving us a wonderful chance to obtain knowledge right at our fingertips, people still seem to spend their time overwhelmingly in self indulgent activities like gambling, viewing porn or playing games. The will to learn seems to be lost to a need to be entertained. The desire to see gives way to a need to be shown. The hunger to know gives way to a need to be told what to know.
Some people get very rich and powerful from fulfilling these needs and we lose something very special in the bargain.