A Life of Adventure - A Preface

This is the preface of a book I began writing nearly two years ago and never finished. I hope to one day complete this work, on the study of adventure in our lives, its benefits and drawbacks, and how we can maximize our experiences to grow our strength of character.

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PREFACE

I will never forget the first time I laid eyes on Times Square.

My father thought it fitting to begin a family tradition: when his children reached the age of thirteen, that feared, golden year of angst and rebellion, he would book a short trip with just him and the birthday child to explore the legendary, monolithic New York City. Roping in his rambunctious youngsters before they trampled off and began the soul-searching journey on which all adolescents embark, my saint of a father would take opportunities during the trip to impart priceless knowledge to us. He reinforced the value of adventure and comradery. He exposed us to a plethora of new cultures, sights, sounds (many), smells (unfortunately many), and foods (especially, much to my delight). Above all, he instilled within us a desire to grow and better ourselves, to see the beauty in everything, and to take each opportunity we were given to cultivate a healthy fear and pursuit of the Lord, growing our wills and our characters for the glory of God and the service of others.

The day we arrived in the Big Apple progressed as though I were in the most lucid of dreams. As soon as the car emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel, I was caught up in a majestic glinting of sunlight off of countless window panes and shiny steel beams. The historic streets were lined with skyscrapers my young eyes had only seen in magazines, capturing my attention immediately, their castle-like spires extended upwards towards the pale blue sky. What shorter buildings remained seemed to audibly tell tales of a bygone era, contrasting the industrial and efficient with hints of allure and extravagance. I could practically see a hundred years into the past as cobblestone streets made their way within eyeshot, dated echoes of hard-hitting hooves tramping down the way, pulling a carriage in tow. The city stood out to me as its own unique time capsule that was rediscovered every time a new soul laid eyes on it, with no dirt stains or weather damage, only a perpetual polish.

My face was glued to the window as we passed person after person, taking in each street vendor and businessman hailing a taxi (up until this point, I doubted whether these elusive yellow cars even existed). Realizing that our car was hardly moving down the never-ending stretch of metropolis, I turned to my dad, who broke his gaze on the road for a brief second to smile at me. 

“When will we get to the hotel? And why is everyone driving so slowly?”

My dad only chuckled to himself and turned away, replying, “That’s New York City for you. We’ll be there soon.”

One eternity later (it may have only been an hour), I bounded out onto West 44th Street and, for the first time, turned around slowly, still absorbing every visible and audible stimulus I could process. Our room at the Hotel Mela overlooked the crowded street below, and I distinctly remember perching myself upon the window’s ledge, peering down from above and imagining if I were one of those pigeons on the lampposts that I then overlooked.

Any sort of enthusiasm I had about being in the city fell embarrassingly short compared to what happened next.

The sun had just dipped under the Manhattan horizon when I stepped out onto West 44th once again, suddenly blasted by a harsh November breeze from the Hudson. My left hand tugged at the collar of my oversized dress shirt, and my right hand was tucked snugly into my pants pocket, feeling for the Lion King Broadway ticket my father had handed to me moments before. The quickly darkening streets maintained their mysterious aura as I followed my father down the cracked sidewalk. Against the dusk, a dull glow at an intersection up ahead became increasingly real, and as we ventured farther through that town, more and more billboards, signs, and advertisements lined the city walls, jutting out amongst the stone structures that, I noted, were transitioning to a sleeker and shinier reality. After a few more paces and a sharp turn around a corner, I was immediately taken aback, eyes unblinking, as I stepped into an entirely new planet, my footsteps slowing to a dead stop.

The city of New York as a whole is indescribable. For some, it holds the key to a new life and opportunities galore only feet away from your doorstep. For others, it carries with it a scent of disdain and a cold, unfeeling expanse, composed of architecture and crowds alike. No one person’s experience will be quite like another’s in that concrete jungle, and everyone who has stepped foot in that city has an opinion, detailed or otherwise. 

For young, thirteen-year-old me, I saw all of it at once, and that, more than anything else, was what captured my attention and deep fascination. 

The lights in Times Square nearly blinded me as I turned the corner and took in this vast swathe of neon color. I had never seen such glamor, such industry, centralized in one street corner. My jaw could only drop in sheer awe as more people than I had ever seen in my young life seemed to materialize from nowhere, each with their own hurts and histories, their voices assimilating into one perennial, nearly deafening, wall of sound. Company slogans and branded products protruding from the countless screens dazzled my impressionable brain, yet they made me ache for the natural brick laying behind the artificial technology that waited patiently, yet fruitlessly, to be exposed. While the beauty and the quantity of the human race charmed me, I also could not ignore the souls who were scraping by with bare pennies to their name, feet, even inches, away from those sporting designer watches and jackets. It occurred to me that even some who seem to sit in the lap of luxury feigned prominence, that revelation only serving to deepen my bewilderment. As word and light flashed unceasingly, whizzing by with crackles of electricity, a little camera in my mind captured that moment, with the emotional complexities and unbelievable newness of it all. With a swift click, I found myself standing in the middle of the greatest city in the world. 

My childhood consisted greatly of reading about the inner workings of ships, the vastness of space, and the sheer capacity of enormous feats of engineering and exploration. I remember reading all that I could on the sinking of the Titanic, learning several fun facts about how F-1 races were conducted, and being astounded by the Cassini-Huygens NASA mission, sending a probe to study Saturn and its surrounding moons. 

This was a true adventure, not simply traveling to a place to merely observe what humanity has built, but to experience humanity itself.

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-JDH