It’s the weekend! How has your week been? Are you ready to rest up to tak on another week of adventures?

adventure [ad·ven·ture]: an unusual and exciting or daring experience; excitement associated with danger or taking of risks; engage in daring or risky activity.

The Mighty Everest was thought to be the ultimate adventure, no one was to conquer it they said, until 1953 when Sir Edmund Hillary and guide Tenzing Norgay Sherpa became the first men on the world’s highest mountain. This year marks the 60th anniversary of this epic adventure that made the historic milestone of mountaineering.

The achievement was not without risks and challenges, even the cost of many lives who attempted the same journey, however like many adventurers before and after them, it was the determination to face and overcome challenges that gave them the strength to achieve great things.

Another adventurer, Stuart Trueman, who took 16 months circumnavigating around Australia back in 2011, where he had to overcome difficulties with managing his physical state and the barriers nature threw at him constantly (in forms of the weather, tidal movements and sharks), is planning his next challenge – to circumnavigate around Tasmania in winter.

On an Australian morning show, he was asked how he manages to continue his quest when he is feeling tired and deflated? He did he go on when things got too hard?

“When things got too hard” Trueman said, “I just have to think about the next corner, the next goal and what challenges that lies ahead of me.”

When I hear stories such as Trueman’s, I think of all the travellers whom I have met throughout  the world. All of us had one thing in common, we sought out adventures, we sought out unusual and risky activities that would challenge us, and teach us the ways of the world and allow us to experience life out of the comfort zone.

Adventures don’t have to come with life risking activities, and the degree of an adventure is dependent on people. What is important is the willingness to take that extra step and go the extra mile beyond the limits, forego the ‘easy’ and take on the ‘difficult’ and to challenge and overcome.

And out of these experiences, I am often taught many lessons and different ways of doing the same thing. I have seen lives being lived under various circumstances, children whose lives are without electronic entertainments and families who doesn’t always have a roof over their heads. I have lived on a diet of potatoes, worked without the assistance of machinery and cleaned without the luxury of running water. All of these experiences have taught me things that I would never have learned, if I didn’t take on the challenge of an adventure.

And in a way, I think of life as an adventure of its own. Life should be an adventure, and if it’s not, go look for one. There is no point in life that isn’t filled with some kind of difficulties and risks, because without these challenges, we will never learn and progress.

Just like Trueman said in his interview: when things get too hard, look forward to the next corner, the next goal and challenges ahead of us. If we abandoned our ideas when it simply ‘got too hard’, we would never have got anywhere.

Ask anyone who has had an adventure, their tales will be filled with risks, danger and challenges but in the end, they’ll tell you “it had been fun!”

After all, an easy life would just be too boring to live.