On rediscovering the creative legend within

I’m caught by a confusing sense of nostalgia this week, as though I’m reliving something I once lost, but have simultaneously found again.

It’s been two months since I came to Mexico to escape Canadian winter, and I’ll be heading home soon. But in these last couple of weeks, the back of my mind stirs, as if it’s working something out that it doesn’t yet understand, and can only communicate to me via a mix of conflicting emotions.

While sometimes the best thing to do with conflicting or confusing emotions is to distract yourself from them, in this case, I find myself curious to understand what’s going on – partly because I suspect it’s the sequel (or perhaps, a reboot) to a call to adventure I first answered in early adulthood.

A small-town boy meets the big bad world

In the year 2000, I fell in love with the movie The Beach, as well as the book by the same name. You’ve probably seen or know of this movie, but in short it stars a young Leonardo Dicaprio on a trip to Thailand in search of new experiences. He finds what he’s looking for in a secret community of travellers living on a beach on a forbidden island.

As a young man, the story really appealed to my own desire to go on an adventure. To roll up in a foreign place where no one knows me. This desire is one that many of us feel in that transitional space between breaking free from the confines of adolescence and stepping into early adulthood – a short window of time before adult responsibility sets in.

My own adventure began as soon as I finished high school. I packed up the car my dad gave me and drove across the province to live in Ottawa. I stayed there two years, working in restaurants, meeting new people, experiencing all the things. After that, I went to Montreal for a year, a city I love but which showed me what it’s like to be an outsider (because I don’t speak French). After that, I went to Australia, where I became hopelessly enamoured with an Australian and ended up staying nearly two years.

What spurred all this adventure was that calling inside me. The same one that I identified with in the film The Beach. But like in the film, there came a time when reality caught up with me. I ended up getting sick in Australia and was hospitalized for a couple days – after which, the thrill of being so far from home lost its charm. My relationship with the Australian was also not what I’d dreamed it would be.

So I went home. Tired, confused and heartbroken.

The secret shame of a hopeless romantic

For a long while after coming home from my adventure, I harboured a secret shame.

I was ashamed because I’d imagined myself as an explorer, like Leonardo Dicaprio in The Beach. But my adventure was nothing like his. It was tame. When I arrived in Australia, I immediately rented an apartment I could live in, and found a job so I could keep the money coming in. I didn’t take big risks. I didn’t break free from the things I felt were holding me back. I had no epiphanies. I lived a pretty ordinary life.

Eventually I concluded that I’d romanticized the idea of adventure. I’d failed to separate the story of it from reality. In fact, this failure to delineate between fantasy and reality seemed to cause a lot of problems in many different areas my life. In my relationships, in my career, in my entire world. Love is not like it is in a John Hughes movie. Success is not like it is in Working Girl. Adventure is not like it is in The Beach.

And I was the silly romantic for imagining – hoping, even – that life could be like that.

I assumed for a very long time that those flights of fancy were the vestiges of my childhood, and I was a little later than others to break free from them – things we must shed as we grow older so that we can embrace practical realities.

So I worked very hard on shedding those fantasies from my mind, focusing on the real world and building a successful life for myself. I have achieved that. I am happier now in my stability than I ever have been before.

Still, as I wander around the streets of Mexico with the sun shining on my face, I feel that stirring inside me again like I did when I was in my early 20s, before I’d wisened up to the reality of life.

Embracing the call to adventure

Since arriving here in Mexico, I am reminded again and again of that young version of me – the one who was so inspired by the story of The Beach. The one who isn’t great at meeting new people, but does it anyway. The one who prefers habits and creature comforts, but is trying new things anyway. The one who is still captured by the romance of adventure, and feels ashamed of that silly part of myself.

But I’m also reminded of something else.

After years of turning my back on the part of me that dwells in the romance of life, I discovered I’d made another mistake. Because while the romantic story of The Beach and the practical reality of Mike’s 20-something adventure are two entirely different things, they are intrinsically linked.

The fictional story inspired my real adventure.

That is the whole point of stories – not to replicate life but to inspire it. To put us in touch with the parts of ourselves we might not understand, or forget about, or fail to recognize. Within each of us, the call to adventure exists. To answer that call, we don’t necessarily have to discover a secret society of travellers on a forbidden island. It can be as tame or as wild as you want it to be. It can be as simple as taking a new street on your way to work, or as comfortable as renting an apartment in Mexico for two and half months in winter.

Ultimately, what’s at the heart of the call to adventure is the desire to see one’s self anew. To rediscover what makes you unique. To find out what you’re made of.

What answering that call this year has done for me is to remind me that I am a romantic adventurer at heart – something I don’t have to be ashamed of anymore.