Definition: Adventure
Adventure has always been easy to experience, even if it is a difficult concept to define. The word adventure often has a kind of positive excitement and purposeful connotation associated with it, but the actual term adventure and, by extension, the experience of adventure encompasses a slew of other nuances. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, adventure is first and foremost “an accident,” which suggests that it is neither purposeful nor inherently positive (“adventure, n.”). Describing an adventure as just an accident, however, would not be offering a complete definition of the word in that adventures can be chosen and fully experienced without any sort of mishap or accident. In its entirety, an adventure is anything, positive or negative, that has some sort of risk, newness, or excitement which forces the adventurer to be mentally present and invested.
By this definition, adventures come in many different forms, ranging from trying a new recipe to scaling the Alps. Both of these actions entail a type of risk, newness, and excitement, albeit grossly different in amount, and would create a presence for the adventurer in which autopilot is not an option. These examples, however, persist the myth that adventure is a positive experience in which the adventurer has agency, and therefore do not fully represent the adventurers who have no choice in their experience of risk and newness, like that of the exile or refugee. By definition, these individuals experience an adventure, a horrible, nightmarish adventure in which the familiar is forcefully stripped away, leaving the adventurer present and alone. In these moments, adventure’s risk and newness have the potential to be all consuming and overpowering. This type of all encompassing adventure, as opposed the adventure in which the greatest risk is burning a cake, erases guarantee of return to ‘regular’ life, having the power to completely uproot the adventurer’s pre-adventure identity and debase the previous home.
If adventure, then, holds the potential for the destruction of routine, what is so alluring about the experience that would make someone choose to adventure? The answer comes in the root of the word, venture, which is defined as “risk[ing] the loss of (something) … esp. in the hope of obtaining some advantage or gain” (“venture, v.”). While in some instances, the potential gain is tangible, such as a delicious new cake, other adventures have a vastly more ambiguous reward: depth. Being present forces individuals to think and see and feel their surroundings in ways that routine never can. Presence that comes from adventure gives us moments of total engrossment in our experiences, allowing us to marinate in our humanity and inadequacies and brevity of being. In risking the known, we embrace the new, the exciting, the scary, adding depth to our personal repertoire of experiences through which we can better express empathy and understanding.
Bakhtiyar Vahabzade, an Azeri poet and playwright, experienced his share of adventure, both purposeful and happenstance. “Propogating nationalism” through poems and essays in Soviet Azerbaijan cost Vahabzade his citizenship, forcing him to move away from his family to hide from the KGB (“Memoirs of Poet Bakhtiyar Vahabzade”). Once reinstated due to kind words from a high ranking official and friend, Vahabzade continued to write Azeri poems and plays. Of life, Vahabzade reflects:
“If we could live
Each day to its fullest,
We should be thankful for our fate,
And shouldn't complain about the passing of time.
I've witnessed those who lived a century, 150 years,
And still left the world with empty heart and brain
Don't measure life by its length,
Measure it by its depth.”
(“Life Is as Short as an Inch”).
Works Cited
"adventure, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2015. Web. 8 Feb 2016.
Vahabzade, Bakhtiyar. "Memoirs of Poet Bakhtiyar Vahabzade." Azerbaijan International. Autumn 2002: 52. ProQuest. Web. 7 Feb 2016 .
Vahabzade, Bakhtiyar. “Life Is as Short as an Inch." Azerbaijani Literature - Bakhtiyar Vahabzade. Trans. Aynura Huseinova. Azerbaijan International, 2003. Web. 6 Feb 2016.
"venture, v." OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2015. Web. 8 Feb 2016.