Adventure Sets You Free
A lesson from sports history on finding meaning through discomfort when you become too comfortable from modern conveniences
You need a challenge
Modern man suffers because he lacks adventure. Without the ability to explore, face danger, and come out on the other side, men live a meaningless life empty of purpose.
After studying sport history for a decade and teaching it to university students, one idea always stuck out to me:
Sports do the most good in society when they’re an arena to test oneself for the adventures of life.
Prove it?
Let’s take quick zip through sport history to see why it was the arena of adventure. Then we’ll find a story from 1905 of a plucky hockey team from the edges of the Arctic to see how sports adapted to a new modern reality without adventure. I’ll conclude by giving you a lesson in rediscovering meaning and purpose through adventure in the modern world.
A brief history of sport and adventure
The Ancient Greeks gave us competitive sports for their own sake. These activities trained men for the responsibilities of citizenship. Athletes were the farmers, the soldiers, the politicians, and the voters.
In their culture, athletes stood as the highest moral examples and provided inspiration to become the best version of yourself.
There was no lack of adventure in society. Sports helped men prepare for it.
The same thing happened in the Medieval period.
Due to the nuances of the Feudal System there were too many young, martially trained, and adventurous knights without a place in European society. They then turned to banditry, marauding, and outright terrorism of the villages and kingdoms throughout the continent.
Sports refined their unbridled enthusiasm through the tournament. At first it was a battle royale between the knights to claim ransom from their opponents. It evolved into the romantic jousting we imagine when we close our eyes and visualise a ‘Medieval Tournament.”
Again, there was no lack of adventure and sport served to prepare men for that journey.
Modernity removes the ability to adventure
Fast forward to the industrial revolution and the idea of adventure transforms.
No longer do men conquer lands, defend their territory, or engage in harrowing adventures. Men now sit for 12+ hours a day, 6 days a week in a dirty factory or sitting at an uptight desk pushing papers.
NO MORE ADVENTURE! Welcome to ‘Modernity”
The word I use to describe the complex idea and process of modernity is SMOOTH. Modernity is a smoothing out process where the kinks and bunches of nature become softened through scientific observation and application. It works to provide comfort but terribly to afford adventure.
Unsurprisingly a crisis of masculinity emerged during this time. Men simply couldn’t find the necessary crucible to test and prepare their characters.
Strikingly, they didn’t NEED those characteristics to survive in the new urban industrial environment. Instead obedience, deference, and predictability became hallmarks of successful men.
Sport’s Role in Solving the Lack of Adventure
But that is not enough for meaning and purpose. Men once again turned to sport. But this time sports BECAME the adventure instead of preparing men for the adventure. One dramatic story from the turn of the 20th century illustrates this.
In 1905 a group of ice hockey players from the Arctic made the most incredible journey just to be blasted in the Stanley Cup finals. They travelled 4000 miles from Dawson City in the Yukon by bike, dogsled, foot, boat, and train just to lose 23-2 over a 2 game series to the famed Ottawa Silver Seven hockey team.
Such a harrowing trip just to lose in humiliating fashion, but the Dawson city boys became national celebrities. The Ottawa club and their fans praised the adventurous spirit of these plucky young upstarts and celebrated them for days despite their historic defeat.
Why you need to adventure
the Dawson city adventure was an anti-modern moment in a modern world.
It’s a valuable lesson about how to defeat one of the main problems facing modern man today: a lack of adventure.
We can use sports as the arena to FIND the adventure we lack in the modern world. If we approach them with the correct attitude we can use them to generate those characteristics the ancient greek and medieval athletes desperately needed to survive.
The need to adventure runs deep in our bones. Without sports we’d be left without any chance to test ourselves and find out what we’re made of.
If you’re struggling to find meaning and purpose in the modern world that’s aimed at your neverending comfort perhaps an adventure is just the cure you need.
The history of sports teaches us that we can find that adventure between the lines. We just need to be brave enough to step into the game.