l'aventure est le mien

Ever since I was little, I've had "cravings." Not real cravings, of course. But when I was young and I wanted to wriggle out of eating my mom's red beans and rice or pork tenderloin for dinner, I would try to push my luck.

"But Mom, I have a craving for spaghetti tonight..." I would wheedle, gazing up at my mother with big, pleading eyes. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But ever since then, it has been a running joke in my family that when I come home to visit and my mom is cooking something, if she knows it is something my picky stomach won't want, she always jokes, "Oh, do you have a craving for something else tonight?"

Lately, I have felt like I'm craving something that nothing seems to be able to quench. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but I keep thinking about the movie Up. The whole premise of that movie is centered on adventure and love and how the two go hand in hand. Today I made one of those "Design-a-Ts" from the Downtown Disney store and on it, I got Carl Frederickson in all his grumpy glory with the most notable movie phrase, "Adventure is Out There!"

I know it isn't nutella or pizza or green peppers that I've been craving. I'm fairly certain it's an adventure. I've always been an adventure-chaser...that is what coming to Orlando was all about. And I'm definitely not tired of living here and working at Disney, but there are days where I feel this dryness in the center of my chest, like I want to squirm away the mundane and see the silver linings on the clouds, gleaming and punctuated, and actually appreciate them. I'm craving something else. A new, foreignness that cannot be obtained by following a schedule. I'm not sure if getting a drastic haircut or going para-sailing at the Contemporary Resort or falling in love or losing myself to find another sliver, a new one, buried deeply in a bundle of nerves and cogs, is going to do the trick, but I would sure like to try.

Adventure is out there. But it is not like a sedentary lemming, content to slumber through the extraordinary for life's dullness. We have to go out and chase it, sprinting all the while, hair streaming behind us, feet nearly off the ground like we're flying. Because... it's maybe in chasing the adventure that we tumble over entirely new ones we never contemplated.