Part 6: The Call to Adventure

A personal tale of adventure, discovery, hardship and hope

Austin Tunnell
September 19, 2024

Update

Hi everyone. I missed a post a couple weeks back as I was grappling with the fact my 5th foot surgery from May had left me worse off, physically. I decided to go ahead and get the 6th surgery to remove the hardware last week, to rule that out as the source of pain. I was hoping it would help. So far, it has not. Each step is still incredibly painful, and I’m actually more hobbled than I was before the 5th surgery. Something I’d never considered a possibility.

It’s a difficult season, to be frank. I’m not sure what to do or what lies ahead.

But I wanted to get back to writing because it is in the midst of hardship that we need meaning the most. And writing helps me see that meaning. It reminds me it’s there, and how far I’ve come, even if I cannot experience it at this time.

Introduction

I’m writing a multi-part series about finding happiness, in work and in life, and how that shapes the way I think about architecture and the built world.

Where we left off:

It may be a Hell of my own making, but it isn’t just an inner reality, affecting only me. It emanates outwardly, affecting everyone and everything around me. Just like the angry, bitter old man brought a taste of Hell to everyone in his life.

That’s utterly terrifying. But it makes us immensely powerful.

Which begs the question: what would happen if we took the opposite path?

Part Six: The Call to Adventure

I’ve always loved adventure stories. At every stage of my life. Hardy Boys, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter.

I actually didn’t read Harry Potter until college. After Deathly Hallows, I had a Harry Hangover for months. I’d think back to the story with longing. Longing for it to be real. The magic, the wonder, the adventure of a lifetime. And the rapture of an all-consuming purpose. A reason to be alive, to fight, to sacrifice and act courageously. A reason to justify my existence and risk it all.

Hell, I reread it a few years ago, at 33 years old, and had the exact same reaction. What I would give to live in that world!

Reading these kinds of stories has always stirred something deep in my soul. They cut through all the complacency of everyday life and jolt me awake. They set ablaze my desires that lay dormant and unfulfilled.

I’ve never been able to quite put it into words, or even define exactly what it is that calls to me, because words feel so shallow.

What, do I just want magic to be real?? Well, actually, yes, I do, if I’m being honest. But there is something much deeper.

I suppose that’s what makes them stories. They’re not just telling us “what happened”. That’s a police report. We’re not supposed to be able to define it, or wrap our head around it, or reason our way through it.

Because these stories are not talking to our head. They’re talking to our heart. They’re helping us see something that is unseen. They’re an invitation to seek something. Something we do not have but desperately need to find. To become all that we could be.

It’s the Call to Adventure. And we cannot answer it with mere words.

Growing Up

No one ever thought to tell me life shouldn’t be like an adventure book. Or if they did, I didn’t hear them. So I’ve always lived as if they were real, as if that’s how life works.

It admittedly got me into trouble earlier in life. I snuck out. I pulled pranks. I blew up stuff. You know, typical guy stuff. I’ll spare you the details. But looking back, it was a desperate attempt to feel like I was part of a story. To feel alive. When I was young there was an innocence to it – amidst the destruction.

As I grew older and the realities of life began to sink in, I remember feeling profoundly disappointed by life.. Life was so…tedious. Pedestrian. Unexceptional. It was nothing like the movies or books I loved. And I couldn’t escape it with my imagination like I could as a kid.

So I turned to a hedonistic pursuit of fun. I became an adrenaline-seeking, fun-seeking, destructive teen. With a growing layer of anger and resentment, bitter and disillusioned with life. That was most of my high school experience.

But then Freshman year of college, my first semester, I ruptured my spleen in football practice and nearly bled out alone in the medical room while they finished practice because they thought it was just a bruised rib. I had 2 liters (out of 6) of blood in my stomach by the time I went into surgery, and I still remember the last words from the surgeon before putting me under: “you might not make it.”

I didn’t know you were allowed to say that. But I’m glad he did. It was the wakeup call I needed. My life, while perhaps punctuated by “fun” occasions, was not a happy life. Nor a meaningful one. If I had died, what would the world really be missing? Based on my previous few years, not a whole damn lot. And I knew it.

So I started trying, with sputtering success, to get my life in order. I started looking not just for fun and escape, but for meaning.

Real Life Adventures

But I still dreamed of real-life adventures. My heart still called to experience the unknown, to explore, to discover!

So when I graduated from college with $25k saved up from an internship, and a good job lined up four months later at KPMG which I’d pushed as late as possible, I set off for Spain and Portugal for three months on a grand adventure. Just me, my backpack and a pair of Chacos.

Oh, the adventure!

I couch surfed with strangers, crashed a fashion party in Madrid that looked like something from Emily in Paris, discovered hidden beaches off cliffs in Lagos uncovered by low tide, explored magical caves and grottos in crystal blue water worthy of a scene from Game of Thrones, skinny dipped under the most picturesque waterfall in Ronda, got lost in the Sierra Nevada, nearly drowned myself kitesurfing in Tarifa, witnessed a bullfight in Madrid’s famed stadium, cruised on a rented moped through the Hills of Andalucia, ate my way through San Sebastian, hiked with priests on the Camino de Santiago, scalped tickets for the most epic Coldplay concert in Lisbon, and marveled at all the incomprehensible beauty that man has built. I felt like Ernest Hemingway!

Photos from my Spain & Portugal backpacking trip. Summer 2011.

It was the adventure of adventures.

Yet, like Hemingway, underneath the adventure, I was still me, and a persistent stream of unhappiness flowed beneath.

While I was looking for pictures to share with you, I stumbled across my old blog. I’d forgotten about it. I thought I would have to recount how I felt from memory, but instead, let me share with you an entry from the adventure itself:

July 12, 2011 “Morose Musings”

Traveling alone for three months is everything people think it is and is nothing people think it is. I have had exciting experiences; I have had disappointing experiences. There are moments when I want nothing more out of life; there are also moments when I wonder, is this it?

It takes courage to even write about it because I don’t like acknowledging it. I am living most people’s dream. I don’t have any typical responsibilities and most of my concerns are hedonistic. What do I want to do today? Where do I want to eat? What sounds fun? Yet, I am not having the best time of my life every day that I am gone. I am still subject to limitations.

For example, I can’t stay in euphoria for two months because my body is physically unable to sustain it, and so I ease back into equilibrium—sometimes dipping below. After just one week my perspective began to adjust to my new lifestyle as well, stripping me of blind excitement and normalizing the situation. Traveling is my reality, and I find it difficult to even recall what life was like before. Traveling, as a whole, quickly became un-extraordinary; all my extraordinary experiences are documented in my blog, which doesn’t even come close to covering the whole time I have been gone. Sometimes I wake up tired or grumpy. Sometimes I wake up and don’t feel like doing anything. Sometimes I wish I was somewhere else. Long term traveling is simply not an escape from life or its limitations.

Yet, these limitations pale in comparison to the limitations I impose on myself. Consciously, I knew that traveling to another country wouldn’t fix anything, but somewhere, subconsciously, I hoped and thought it might. My subconscious was sorely disappointed when it was made painfully aware that no amount of miles can separate me from my fears and doubts and insecurities. They are mine, and like a parasite with unswerving allegiance they feed on my joy and peace wherever I go. I can’t escape myself.

Damn.

I can’t believe I had the courage to be that honest.

I could also share incredible stories with you from that trip that still enrich and nourish me to this day. But those are moments, they aren’t life. And my greatest lesson from that trip is reflected in one line: “I knew that traveling to another country wouldn’t fix anything, but somewhere, subconsciously, I hoped and thought it might.”

Slapped by Life

Now, imagine coming back to Houston after that trip, both epic and mundane, to go work as an auditor under fluorescent lights counting NGLs and testing financial controls? Set aside the adventure, just being surrounded by soul nourishing beauty at every turn for three months, to being bombarded by the ugliness that is suburban sprawl as my everyday habitat.

My God. I’d been disappointed by the adventure of adventures. Imagine how disappointed I was by post-college, ordinary life! I was profoundly unhappy. I was so depressed I couldn’t get off the couch on Sundays. I tried to find meaning in extracurriculars. But nothing could make up for the pit I felt in my soul.

This confused me because I’d really been trying to follow God for a few years, to live a better life. I thought that was the whole point of God: to fix me. If I was going to be this miserable, why make the effort at all? Why abstain from my more hedonistic desires?

Thankfully, I’d already ruled out the unadulterated pursuit of pleasure as a path to happiness.

So I again asked the question, with increasing desperation: is this all life has to offer? What does my heart tell me?

My heart told me there had to be something more. There had to be something that could justify my existence. And I desperately needed to find it. I needed to find something I cared about. The problem is I had no idea what I cared about.

That’s when I started Googling “cool jobs” and stumbled across Kalu Yala and the Peace Corps.

I want to share the blog entry I made as I quit KPMG, leaving my old life and embarking on a new, unknown path. It’s titled, laughably, “I’m going on an Adventure”. See? I told you I’ve always been obsessed with adventures…

January 11, 2013 “I’m Going on an Adventure”

“A few months ago I attended a TEDx event in Houston. The application process consisted of various interesting questions, one of them asking, “Do you consider yourself happy?” There were six rankings. I selected the second to lowest option. And if I am to be honest, that is higher than what I would have selected a year ago. To many people who know me that probably sounds crazy; I’m always the cheery guy full of laughs and smiles. It is not that I was pretending. That is a very real part of my personality. But those laughs and smiles in the midst of conversations and social situations comprised a very small part of my life, and though it was a welcome break from all of the dissatisfaction and depression that often consumed me, it was still just that: a break.

It is a bit odd, too, because when I look at my life it actually sounds pretty awesome. In the past year-and-a-half I have graduated from college, backpacked through Europe, started my first real job, joined a swing dancing team, discovered a passion for writing, earned my CPA license, and, with great joy, became an Uncle. I lived in an awesome apartment in Montrose, drove a car I liked, took some sweet vacations, and got to see my family on a regular basis. What more could I possibly want?

I still don’t have the answer to that question, but that is exactly what this blog, and this new adventure, is about. About a month ago I quit my job at a public accounting firm after working there a little over a year. During my time at that job I learned a great deal about myself. I learned that I would never be happy working for a large corporation whose cause, though important, had no meaning to me; serving clients whose businesses, while once again significant, did not hold my interest. I learned that working simply to live and pursue hobbies and interests outside of my career was not enough to bring me fulfillment. I can’t live in that dichotomy, at least not if I can help it. I long for a vocation in which my career goals and personal goals are one and the same. I need to care about what I am doing. And though I think that some of these thoughts are a bit idealistic—I mean, who doesn’t feel that way sometimes?—I also believe that they are very real. I do not know how others perceive the world, but I do know that I yearn for a career that resonates with me, and I cannot escape the desire to pursue my dreams. And so after a little over a year at that job, for which I am thankful, I am happy to say that I am finally taking a courageous new step.

On January 11th I left for Panama City as a business intern with Kalu Yala, a development organization with the mission of creating a sustainable community based on small-scale agriculture, local business and community. I love the idea. I cannot wait for this new adventure—to be working for an organization whose cause is exciting, whose dream is big, and whose employees believe in what they are doing. Best of all the adventure does not end there. When I return from the 3 month internship I leave for Uganda with the Peace Corps for 27 months as a community economic development volunteer. I do not yet know what my dreams are, or what I want to be when I grow up (I’m 24…that doesn’t count as grown up, does it?), but I do know that I am taking a step in the right direction, and for the first time in a very, very long time, I am excited about life.

Yet as I sit in transit at the airport in San Salvador, waiting for a new flight to Panama since my original one was canceled, my thoughts are held captive by fear. What if it isn’t all that I imagine it to be? What if I don’t like it? What if I still don’t feel fulfilled? What if I discover that I have nothing to offer? Not to mention the lack of job security or paycheck…was accounting really so bad? Crap, I don’t even have a car anymore, or a bed to sleep in! What was I thinking, selling everything I own, and leaving everything I know, to plunge into the unknown, thinking it would be an ‘adventure’? I find it ironic how in the face of the unknown, familiar misery can sound so appealing. But as my sweaty fingertips click against these keys, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes about fear from R.R. Martin’s a Game of Thrones, where a son asks his father, “Can a man be brave if he is afraid?”, and his father responds, “Son, that is the only time a man can be brave.” And afraid I am. But I am also feeling a little brave.”

To be continued….

Conclusion

Thank you for following along as I reflect on my own journey, a search for meaning that continues even as physical adventures become more challenging, given my condition.

I believe we all feel the call to adventure in our own way. My hope is that sharing my experiences inspires you on your own path, wherever it may lead.

Until next time!

Austin

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