It used to be that work was what happened to you when you were busy making other plans.

— Outside Magazine, September 2011

Whenever I return from an adventure, he invariably asks the question that I find so troubling.

“Back to reality, I guess, huh?”

I suspect that my father’s perspective is borne of a traditional post-industrial world view: you go to work, you labor long and hard in the factory, and, for a few precious days or weeks each year, you “get away from it all.”  Life and work: forever divorced from one another.  Reality. And unreality?

It shouldn’t be that way.

Reality is not a prison sentence. It is not something we subsist in – and drop out of from time to time.

Reality is what is: This precious moment. Reality encompasses the entirety of our being.  It is our life in each and every instant:  each joy, each hardship, each challenge; the cacophony of our lives; and the splendor. There is nothing “else.”

To live a life divided between “realty” and

• Relationship
• Fun
• Vacation
• Pleasure
• Fulfillment

is to deny the integrity – the wholeness – of who we are.

Our lives are lived out fully in the here and now. To live contingently – for some future moment, for some potential happiness – is to deny the beauty, the richness, the vastness of what exists within our grasp.

Confucius wrote, “choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

My mentor, the late great adventure photographer Galen Rowell, in reflecting upon his life, said, “Most important of all, I happened upon a special relationship between myself, my career and my subject matter. I entered into a world with no firm boundaries between working, playing and living.”

A tapestry well woven.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t “get away from it all” now and then.  I’m a big fan of going “off the grid.”  That time allows us to assess what’s working in our lives. And what’s not.

Sometimes we feel depleted, trapped, hopeless.  Sometimes we believe that, if we can only get to some other place, things will be better.  When we feel this way, something needs to change.

If we are living contingently – for another time – for a different reality – it means that we don’t have our lives the way we want them, the way they need to be… yet.

Reality requires that we tinker, to get it “right.” We need to make small changes; and sometimes big ones. Course corrections to:

• Health and fitness
• Finances
• Jobs
• Where we live
• Relationships

Our highest aspiration is toward a reality that is filled with freedom and fulfillment; a reality that resonates with peace and joy. A reality that is whole. (We must not “settle” for a reality that is less than whole.)

What if we didn’t feel stretched and torn and fragmented?

What if we found satisfaction and meaning in every one of our days?

What if reality were fun?

What if Mondays were as great as Fridays?

We are the designers, the co-creators of our lives.

We get to choose our reality.

Choose a good one.

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Journeys on the Edge: Living a Life That Matters

Available for pre-order soon at www.walthampton.com