Take The Risk – Empire and Adventure

If you in any way resemble the 16-25 worldly, highly-ambitious, top-university aiming/graduated demographic that I believe my readership represents, then I imagine you have been to or volunteered in a third world country before. If so, then I'm sure that you will write/wrote in your college application essay(s) about how life-changing and eye-opening your ‘epicly’-long, torturously amenity-less, one-week sojourn there was.

I wonder if your sense of empathy or imagination is strong enough to visualize what life –  day in and day out, 24/7, 52/365, no breaks – in such a place would constitute. A life, might I add, where even a visit to the toilet is a living hell, even if your stool miraculously manages to maintain even an iota of firmness. Now imagine how much bleaker that hypothetical life would be set in pre-WW2 East Africa as a British District Officer/‘empire-builder’/settler.

I admit (for my perceived sanity’s sake) that this thought experiment was not originally-inspired, but instead transplanted after reading Roald Dahl’s Going Solo, a brief, vivid, and entirely enthralling account of his years in East Africa working for Royal Dutch Shell and as an RAF pilot in the Middle East during WW2. In it, Dahl paints a picture of English settlers in East Africa as intrepid adventurers who ventured out to the squalid, malaria-infested, and perennially-muggy far corners of the empire, supposedly for selfless reasons (the Empire).

But posing myself the question “Why on Earth would somebody do that?” brought up a different set of possible motives: the intrigue, beauty, and romance associated with setting out on a perilous and mysterious journey that very few had the chance to go on, an adventure that promised unique experiences and terrific tales, an opportunity to satisfy man’s inexorable need to be different. When one understands the symbiotic relationship between thrilling, life-defining adventure and genuine, life-threatening danger, the decisions of the balmy/dotty/’potty as a pilchard’* British appear less unreasonable.

Actually, it makes a lot of sense, especially to me. For a long while now, it’s been a small fantasy, a common daydream of mine to join an active-duty military unit and go on tours of duty. I can’t rule out the possibility that I’ve been brainwashed by the media’s extensive glorification of combat, but my interest in putting my life in danger as a soldier is certainly not motivated by the idea of killing or maiming others – violence does not appeal to me. That leaves me with the same motivation that the erstwhile British had: self-definition through hazardous adventure.

It would explain some of the undeniably foolish decisions I’ve made: my friends and I nearly got kidnapped in XXX** when we accepted (at my behest) some strangers’ offer to follow them to a ‘nearby club’ to smoke kief. Once we got to the club, which was positively not nearby, large, burly men opened our cab’s doors for us and ushered us inside. Calling the ‘club’ shady, would be have been a gross understatement. Questionable patrons and equally questionable hostesses littered the place. Apparently my warning bells were on silent that day.

Fortunately I had left my phone at the café I was at previously, so I went back to retrieve it – I did not find it peculiar at the time that my newly-made friends firmly insisted on wanting to accompany me. I was on my way back, however, when suddenly I was getting texts from my friends’ phones that said “Dan, I think something is off…”, "where r u????" “we hv ur friends”, and “we want money”. Luck was again on my side when my friends managed to run away (literally-- luckily they’re fast runners) after they were escorted to an ATM and extorted at fist/knife-point. I later picked them up at the hotel they were hiding in. You know what else was weird, in hindsight? Why would somebody carry a club’s business card on him?

On another occasion, in Ios, Greece, at 2 ‘o’clock in the morning, I decided that it would be a great idea to take my scooter and ride 20km away to Homer’s Tomb, the island’s most famous, and only, tourist attraction. The entire road there was a single-lane carriageway which after the first 3km, was no longer lit by streetlamps of any variety – the island has a population of 2,000, and there was nothing else on the road to the tomb. This unlit road was also extremely steep and windy (and windy since the road crossed an exposed mountain face). The real problem? I didn’t actually know how to ride a scooter. The only reason I managed to convince the scooter-renter to entrust me with a machine was that my UK Provisional Driving License (note: provisional), had a little picture of a scooter on its reverse side, which I explained meant that I was fully capable of operating one.

Somehow, I got to the tomb without incident. For your information, if you ever visit Ios, the tomb isn’t really much of anything. On reaching, there’s an anti-climactic sign that says something along the lines of “This may or may not be Homer’s Tomb”, and a dirt path that leads to the alleged tomb itself, a roof-less six-foot tall house made out of large stones. Situated on a cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea, the tomb must have had an extraordinary view, one that of course, however, cannot be seen at three in the morning. What I could see though, was the stars, and truly, they were brilliant that night. Thousands upon thousands of them, as far as the eye could see. So many, and so equally bright, that I couldn’t even distinguish any of the constellations. For an urban-dweller like me, it was spectacular (a site only rivalled by an earlier visit to the Sahara). Oh, and the sea. I could hear the sea the sound of the waves slapping against the cliff-face. But nothing else.

The whole moment screamed of an existential makeover. And I tried, I really did. I recalled my strongest memories, I re-evaluated my relationships, I analyzed my values and ethics, I thought about my life and my inevitable death… With the stars and waves as my only company for miles around, I sat there with my iPhone torch and painstakingly combed through my soul. I smoked a cigarette***, and redoubled my efforts. Without a doubt, it was a really special moment, but alas, the existential makeover would have to wait.

Encouraged by my safe passage to the tomb, arrogance and temerity took ahold of me on the journey back, and I started recklessly going at speeds of 60kmh, which isn't terribly advisable on an unlit, windy, downhill mountain road. Inevitably, I hit a patch of sand on the edge of the road and my front tire lost its grip on the tarmac. Unluckily: I slid into a thorn bush hands first (some of the thorns didn't come out for a month). Luckily: the thorn bush cushioned my landing and prevented me from sliding under the metal separator and over the cliff face. Unluckily: the bike crashed into the separator and I later had to pay €500 to get it fixed. Luckily: there was a metal separator. Very luckily: the bike still managed to work because there was nobody around for miles around and the sun had yet to rise. Oh, and I was alive.

Do I regret any of this? Not really. My only regrets might be not reporting the XXX thugs to the police and not bringing my camera with me to Homer’s Tomb. The risks I took and the dangers I was exposed to? No ragrets. But did I change or become a “new person” after these experiences, which I exposed myself to great danger to obtain? Nope. Nothing extraordinary happened. In fact, nothing tangible or observable whatsoever happened. I did not “level-up”. I did not suddenly become a strong, mature, independent youth hardened by my harrowing experiences. What happened was more subtle. By not cheating my own expectations of myself, I was living my life the way I wanted to live it, living it on my own terms. I was staying true to myself by doing the things I wanted to do, the things that normally you don’t get a chance to do because you’re afraid, afraid of what others might think, afraid of failure, afraid of taking a risk. 

Don’t be. In just the same way that everyone is unique, everyone has a unique risk tolerance. And that’s OK. My Greek escapade, may to some, have been their equivalent of driving without a seatbelt or running around the pool, and to others, the equivalent of shark diving cage-less or free-climbing a 3000m rock face. But so long as you don’t short-change your own tolerance for risk, your life will be your own daring adventure.

Going Solo’s foreword begins with the following truism: “A life is made up of a great number of small incidents and a small number of great ones.”

In light of this, always take the risk. 

Maximize the number of great incidents in your life, and don’t look back.

~~ Fin ~~

* Dahl’s wonderful phrase

** Location intentionally left undisclosed – we swore to keep what happened that night a secret

*** I long quit smoking; previously, I reserved smoking for very special occasions such as this one... and hitting on girls in clubs

PC: http://terrain-mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/shutterstock_1330842741.jpg