The Worth and Value of Adventure (Particularly for Young Men)
“His blood quickens at the lure of life-risk and the thrill of breathtaking, touch-and-go drama although he does not recognize the sensations as such.”
The above quote was written of my favorite of Robert E. Howard's adventuring heroes, the slayer of wicked men, the wandering Puritan, Solomon Kane. The picture above that is one from the roads which lead up the San Jacinto Mountains. It's about two-thirds of the way up the north side of that range, along one of the routes which will eventually take you into my hometown. I took this photo in late winter last year, roughly a week after the snows pictured here fell.
What do these two things have in common? Naught more than the simple fact they came to mind after I read an essay written by
early this morning, (at the time of writing) which was crudely yet effectively titled, Stop Being A Pussy. Naturally, I've linked the essay for your own consideration, and I highly recommend giving it a read, especially if you're a young man. It's a quick read and well worth your time, and I shan’t be summarizing it here beyond saying the essay delves into ideas revolving around the value that adventure and certain forms of danger provide men of all ages, but young men in particular.Upon reading TDA’s essay, I immediately found myself thinking of two things. First among them was a story involving a trio of gaming friends from Australia, a group of blokes I knew from my World of Warcraft days, specifically during the expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I told a story about these lads which relates to TDA’S point in the comments of his essay, so if you'd like to see that, you can check it out after reading his thoughtful and deeply personal piece.
The second thing I thought of was two subgenres of fiction which many men love: heroic fantasy and adventure fiction. Most of you who read my work are already aware that I am a colossal proponent of these particular subgenres of speculative fiction. Being both a writer of dark fantasy adventure fiction, heroic adventure fiction, and one of the cohosts of Sword & Saturday, a weekly roundup of fantasy and adventure fiction I run alongside my compatriots,
, my love of these sorts of stories is not merely worn on my sleeve, but imprinted upon my very soul.I understand that for some, my phrasing may seem over-the-top and absurd. I assure you, though it may seem that I'm merely being flowery and flippant, my words were chosen with deliberate intent. My love of adventure fiction - fantasy as my favorite, but adventure in all its forms - exists in my very core, and it exists there because of my love for genuine adventure in my daily life. A love which manifests in the wanderlust I frequently feel. A love which shines through in the stories I write, especially in terms of pulp inspired stories like my Pearldiver's Adventures series. A love which I try to feed as often as I can, and more importantly, which I try to share with my family and friends, and my wife most of all.
The reason I bring this up in relation to TDA’s essay is because of some very important points that he hits on regarding the importance of risk and danger for the development of men, particularly young men. It's common knowledge that men have a larger tendency towards taking risks in their lives than women do. This is a product of our general psychology, which is itself a product of our biology. Greater abundance of certain hormones, chief among them being testosterone, helps to instill in us males a desire for thrill seeking, danger, and the testing of our limits. Channeled in a healthy manner and appropriate environment, engaging in activities which involve the inherent risk of bodily harm have the potential both to develop into highly important bonding experiences between men, and to present is with milestones of personal growth if and when we surpass a previously established limit within ourselves. This doesn’t necessarily mean things like joining the military or deciding to go skydiving or anything like that, either. Sports, wood or metalworking, hiking, skiing; these are but a tiny handful of the numerous smaller scale activities which can satisfy this desire in men to varying degrees.
Suffice it to say, if you haven't done so already, I once more highly recommended reading TDA’s essay on this subject. His deep and clinical understanding of the behaviors and psychology that make up the roots of this phenomenon enable him to explain it far better than I ever could.
This core desire which most men have is reflected in the sort of media we tend to consume, as well as the moments from that media that tends to stick with us. Action and adventure are common qualities in many male oriented stories, be they fiction or nonfiction. The primal need to seek thrill and risk is one of the reasons why we’re drawn to stories packed with action and high stakes. When these stories present powerful and compelling reasons why men would go out of their way to put themselves at risk, they tend to stick with us, to leave us feeling inspired.
Why? Is it merely some base male desire for adventure and thrill seeking? While that certainly plays a part, I think it’s only one facet. TDA hits on a powerful point in his essay that’s well worth considering when it comes to the kind of adventure and action heavy media that so many men enjoy. His examination of the male drive to embrace risk and seek out danger shines a bright light on why men are drawn to fast paced, high octane fiction depicting strong, masculine heroes capable of great feats. But that’s only one of the lights he shines. There’s other components to consider to fill out this picture. One of the most important, at least where these desires relate to the kinds of stories so many men enjoy, is the purpose behind these adventures. It’s not merely for simple fun that men seek these things out. Most men, and in particular most young men, need to challenge themselves in ways that are not only risky and thrilling, but meaningful. Such tests are important for physical growth, mental growth, and improving our sense of self.
To take an example from my own youth, when I was a thirteen-year-old adolescent, my best friend Jim and I stayed the night at our friend O’Shay’s house. We’d planned for the usual night of video games, trading card games, and maybe a bit of Dungeons & Dragons; very typical stuff for nerdy kids like us. However, O’Shay surprised us by telling us his stepdad had just set up a refurbished weight machine he’d picked up about a month prior. It was one of those full home gym setups, and O’Shay got it in his mind that we should see how much we could bench; little surprise considering he was the most athletic of the three of us.
As he first began talking about it, I remember thinking that I wasn’t much interested in doing that. Jim didn’t seem to be, either, but something changed the more we talked about it. The idea quickly started to seem more and more appealing. Rather than playing the same games we always did, this was something new, a fresh way for us to compete with each other that didn’t involve virtually ripping our spines out in Mortal Kombat 3. So we headed downstairs, popped outside, and went into the store room that his stepdad converted into a home gym.
Once inside, we started trading off using the machine, mostly doing bench presses, butterfly curls, lateral lifts, and chest flies. We kept adding a little more weight each time, trying to find what felt right for our adolescent bodies. If memory serves, we settled in at around 85lbs (38.5kg) for our bench presses. It was at that point that O’Shay leveled a challenge for us. With all of us benching the same weight, each of us would lift as many times as we could in a single sitting. When you felt too tired to go on, you stopped, and the two that weren’t benching would be on hand to spot for whoever was on the bench. Deciding to stick to that aforementioned 85lbs, we agreed, and O’Shay went first.
I believe he managed roughly 60 reps, with Jim following after him at 70 or 75, I don’t recall exactly how many. What I do recall was the expectation that I would perform the worst. Though not entirely rightly, there were some good reasons why I was known as the least athletic guy in our friend group, and I don’t mean just of the three of us present. I was considered the brain of my friend group, and the biggest nerd alongside Jim. I was reed skinny as a kid, and that continued well into my teens, with thirteen being one of the ages where I was at my lankiest. A rangy build I did not have, and my lower stamina and general lack of interest in sports and P.E. only further cemented my legacy as the weakest in the group.
A proverbial switch flipped within me that night. As Jim and O’Shay cracked their jokes about how I wouldn’t even be able to break 25, I settled in. Lifting the weights earlier and building up to that 85lbs we were all comfortable with had felt fantastic, and with O’Shay’s challenge and their ribbing both now in play, I wordlessly set a goal for myself in my mind: I wasn’t just going to beat them, I was going to be the only one to hit triple digits. I was going to hit 100 reps in a single sitting no matter what.
When I started, Jim and O’Shay were joking with themselves. As I hit 40 reps, they started paying attention again. At 50, they were rooting me on to keep going. The reality was they knew I could hit 50, I wasn’t that far behind them, though Jim was generally stronger and O’Shay more athletic overall than I was. Then I hit 60, and then 70, and finally 75, and their rooting turned to a surprised cheer as I took the lead. And then I hit 80, and they started telling me I could stop. I ignored them.
85.
Jim laughs and tells me, “Dude, alright, we get it. You can stop.”
O’Shay chimed in as well. “Yeah man, you did good, you don’t gotta keep going.”
Until this point I hadn’t said anything other than my counts, but something else clicked in me when they said these things. While I knew full well there was nothing ill meaning in their words, they simply wanted to move on to doing other things with the machine, there was a part of me that was actively pissed off that they told me I should stop. I hadn’t told them my goal, I knew that. I knew they had no idea what number I was actually aiming for, but there was a primal part of my mind for which that fact didn’t matter. They told me to stop before I reached 100, so I told them, “Fuck no, I’m getting 100!”
Now I’m not going to sit here and say that this moment suddenly changed my life. I succeeded in reaching my goal, hitting 100 reps on the bench press in a single sitting, but that didn’t mean I suddenly changed into the resident sports all-star who was going to start trying out for every available team. I was still the same nerdy kid I’d always been, the same consumer of fantasy and horror novels, the same watcher of Godzilla movies, the same kid who was switching off with Jim to run our D&D games. But there is a reason why I still remember this moment so vividly, even as I stand at the cusp of 40. This moment showed me that I was capable of overcoming things which I previously believed myself incapable of. I was the skinny kid, the twiggy nerd. I didn’t lift weights. I didn’t enjoy sports. I was the type who sat in his room reading and writing and playing Command & Conquer or Final Fantasy VII or Resident Evil. Benching 100 reps at 85lbs was the sort of thing that before this moment, I’d have told people I wasn’t capable of. I’d have told myself I wasn’t capable of it. Yet I faced down that challenge and I met it in spite of myself, and in so doing, I better understood my own capabilities and grew a little in my confidence.
But moments like these aren’t just relegated to my youth. I’ve been couching much of this…essay? Musing? Ramble? Let’s go with that last one, it feels right.
I’ve been couching much of this ramble in terms like risk, thrill, danger, adventure. To most of us, these terms bring to mind certain kinds of physical activities. Things like combat sports, mountain climbing, far flung travel, racing dirt bikes, wrestling, and a multitude of other physical activities that are inherently risky to undertake. Adventure and accomplishment aren’t just something that happens in the world outside your door, though. The learning of new skills, fostering a loving relationship with someone special to you, the raising of families, and the meeting of long time goals are all ways in which we can push and test ourselves as men. Ways for us to grow and improve, even well past our youth.
I know this to be true, because I’ve achieved some of these things for myself throughout my thirties. I switched careers the same month I turned thirty, and did so on the same day that my wife and I moved out of our first apartment, no less. I worked my way up and pushed myself to learn as much as I could, as quickly as I could from the moment I first started in the coatings industry. I proved myself the quick learner I’ve always known myself to be and earned myself a trusted position which saw me covering for people in every shop in my region, including the drivers who serviced the Naval bases and the harbor, which required me to get certified by the Department of Transportation and to very quickly learn how to drive a large flatbed, something I’d never done before.
And when 2020 shook up the foundations of that job and saw me effectively running a 6 person store by myself, I was once again shown how much further my limits reached than I previously realized. Soon after that, I took a fresh risk and upon the suggestion of my father-in-law, who also used to work in this industry, applied for the company I work for today. I worked my way up, earned the right to run my own shop once they opened one in the part of the county I live in, and it was around this same time that I started the very Substack you’re reading now. I took advantage of the slower days at this new location, leveraging the writing skills I’d developed since I was a boy and the personal awakening I had in the wake of my previous job to write in the manner I always told myself I wanted to, but had never properly taken the time to follow through on.
Now I sit here, writing this essay, almost 5 months removed from the completion of the longest held goal I’ve ever had: publishing my first book, In the Giant’s Shadow. I’ve had the privilege of meeting other stupendous writers, such as the aforementioned The Delinquent Academic, The Brothers Krynn,
, , , , , , , , , , , and , to name but a handful, all of whom have been working incredibly hard at honing their own crafts. I’m sitting on the precipice of the 500 subscriber mark, and have been writing a sequel to my first book in The Jarl’s Son, which has already exceeded the length of In the Giant’s Shadow by 20,000 words.All of this while taking the time to be ever more involved at home, so I can continue support my loving wife as best I can. All of this while still feeding my occasional wanderlust, that I might better appreciate the world around me. All of this while trying to start a family, so that my wife and I might raise children of our own. And this is to say nothing of the cats, which includes the many foster kittens we take in and care for so they can be healthy and happy once they’re adopted into permanent homes; or my wife’s garden, which should be getting us some great tomatoes pretty soon.
Adventure doesn’t just mean going out in the world and traveling far and wide, though it certainly can mean that. Danger and risk don’t just mean throwing yourself into the path of bodily harm for the thrill of it. Much like TDA says in his essay, there are maladaptive ways for men to pursue these risks and thrills, and we must take care to do our best to avoid these things not just for ourselves, but to try and help those we care for avoid them as well. TDA’s past addiction to drugs was one such example, a pastime that brought with it plenty of risk, but none of the growth or accomplishment we’re actually seeking from said risk. My own unhealthy relationship with junk food is similar, and I hope that by putting in the right kind of work, I can overcome this struggle of mine in a manner similar to how he overcame his, though likely with less skiing. I’ve simply no skill in that. Though, he was a ski instructor in the past. Perhaps he could teach me one day?
Nearly a year ago, I wrote an essay titled “The Intrinsic Value of Doing,” where I mused on the idea of how going out to try new things and learn new skills can add a great deal of authenticity to the stories fiction writers like myself write. That same lesson applies to men, and you young men in particular. Listen well; don’t sit on your laurels. Find your strength, find your courage, and get out there. Surround yourself with worthy people, and read, write, and live your adventures.
Sometimes you’ll fall, sometimes you’ll fail. Sometimes what you’re doing will seem most mundane of things, but you might be surprised how much accomplishment you can find when you take the time to examine your everyday life. So long as you’re still breathing, it’s not too late to find ways to challenge yourself, to grow. Hell, Christopher Lee started his own symphonic metal band when he was in his eighties, and released three full albums before he died.
If he can find that drive as an octogenarian, what’s really stopping you other than you?
My first novella, In the Giant’s Shadow, is available for purchase! Lured to the sleepy farming community of Jötungatt by a mysterious white raven, Gaiur the Valdunite soon finds herself caught in a strange conspiracy of ritual murder and very real nightmares.
Purchase it in hardback, paperback, or digital on Amazon now:
“Such tests are important for physical growth, mental growth, and improving our sense of self.”
You touched on something really important here. Some time ago (don’t ask me to remember when because, well, I’ve slept since then), I wrote an essay regarding our natural born instincts and how we have adapted those instincts over time.
For example: as women, since much of our instinct is built on making a suitable “nest” to raise our children, it has morphed from picking berries and soft leaves, to shopping for wall art, comforters and pillows.
For men, it’s gone from the oh so often lethal gladiator battles to football and soccer games in sports arenas. There’s a little bit of our natural instinct in everything which is just fascinating to me. I love picking out those little nuances of our behavior.
But for guys, the games and competition is more than just growth, it’s also practice. Like dogs when they play, it’s more than having fun, it’s practice, a way to hone their defensive skills.
So what I’m saying is, if you and your wife have a son and you want to have a Nerf battle with him (as a mom who has a boy, it’s pretty much inevitable, lol), just tell her it’s good practice 🤣 (I mean, you might be paying for your own funeral but at least you get a Nerf battle out of it right?)
Great essay!