Men need physicality in their lives. They need adventure. They need competition. It’s air for the soul. -Chad Howse
Men aren’t born to sit. Yet that’s what the majority of us do for the majority of our time here. (Read This: A Serious Look At How You Use Time)
I sit. I need to sit. I write for a living, I guess, and we have to earn our keep to feed our belly’s and the belly’s of those we’re supposed to take care of.
Each of us, however, also wants to experience life. And the experience of life cannot occur in a sedentary fashion. We must rise and embark, stand and maybe even fight.
Life occurs more in the struggle than it does in ease. It exists in growth, not in regression. It’s found in action, not in apprehension.
We need physicality like we need air. We need adventure like we need food. They’re the sustenance we crave, but they are not easy to posses. Both require action. Both require the facing of fears and the facing of fears is no ordinary task.
Most run from fear. They hide from it. They allow fear to set boundaries on their lives that keep them confined to a life of boredom and mediocrity. They’ll never die climbing a mountain or be consumed by a bear, sure. But they’ll also never live climbing a mountain or fending off a bear.
You know the feeling. I know the feeling. I hate the feeling but I crave the feeling as well. The nervous energy before a fight, or the paranoia when walking through a valley that you know is grizzly territory. It’s as if your chest is being pounded. It’s like you’re being suffocated. But there’s so much life in these moments it’s hard to describe.
Your senses are heightened. You’re ready for whatever comes.
It’s a similar feeling when your work, the thing you’ve put 10,000 or more hours into perfecting, comes to a head. When the book you’ve been working on is finally published and you await to hear the response of the market. When you’ve worked on an article for days and you nervously wait to see if people take to it, use it, benefit from it in any way.
Living isn’t sitting on your ass thinking about goals and dreams that you’d love to embark upon one day. If you do nothing of importance, what good is reflection?
If you never push yourself, what’s the point of a dream or wish or quiet meditation?
Men are animals of action. We’re beings of pursuit.
To be a man you must get off of your ass, out of your house, as far away from your videogames and movies and TV shows as humanly possible, and out into a world that will test you, beat you, push you to your limits and eventually show you what you’re made of. (Read This: A Man’s Guide to Adventure)
Man up!
Wait no more for your goals to come into your life. Go toward the adventures that your soul calls you to partake in and never look back.
