He lifted me onto the horse whose fore­lock whipped gen­tly in the No­vem­ber breeze. The wind smelled sub­tly of cumin and co­rian­der. I had re­fused to get on at first. I was con­tent with search­ing ir­ra­tionally for the tallest mound of Sa­ha­ran sand from which to watch the sun slip below the hori­zon and paint the sand pink. But when he ap­proached me the sec­ond time, I couldn’t de­cline. He was en­tic­ingly hand­some. His black tagel­must con­cealed every­thing but his dark eyes, whose mys­te­ri­ous­ness seemed to in­di­cate that he was a mi­rage. He spoke not a word but in­stead pulled me onto the horse, gal­loped through the noth­ing­ness, and even­tu­ally brought me back to my nook in the sand. Tunisia epit­o­mized ex­otic ad­ven­ture.

Upon re­turn­ing to the oasis and dis­mount­ing my drom­e­dary, the horse­man and a com­rade trot­ted cir­cles around me. In­spect­ing me with se­vere eyes, he spoke: “Où est mon ar­gent?!” He de­manded pay­ment for the horse ride I’d ini­tially re­jected, awak­en­ing me from my North African dream. I ar­gued with him until he be­came frus­trated, send­ing him scur­ry­ing deeper into the oasis. Later, he’d min­gle with Eu­ro­pean desert-trekkers as they sipped beers at the makeshift bar, dressed in ath­letic gear that com­ple­mented their Hum­mers.

My wan­der­lust has taken me on a se­ries of ad­ven­tures these past five years. I have seen fif­teen coun­tries and half of the United States dur­ing this time, al­ways re­turn­ing home with a new life les­son and ma­tured per­spec­tive.

For ex­am­ple, bungee-jump­ing off the world’s high­est bungee bridge in South Africa brought me to ex­pe­ri­ence si­lence in its purest form. Liv­ing sim­ply in north­ern Uganda al­lowed me to wit­ness hu­man­ity and re­think my role in the world. Road-trip­ping across the U.S. en­abled me to ap­pre­ci­ate free­dom, in every sense of the word.

Each of these ad­ven­tures was an es­cape from the mo­not­ony of home. I set out on quests to eat un­usual food, be­friend lo­cals, dance tra­di­tional dances, and par­tic­i­pate in other clichés, all the while learn­ing more about my­self. I have in­deed gained in­sight from all the typ­i­cal points of in­di­vid­ual and so­ci­etal re­flec­tion that come with travel, but my most pro­found dis­cov­ery was a tragic one: my thirst for ad­ven­ture was un­quench­able. In my de­sire to en­counter some­thing or some­where new, I found that lib­er­a­tion from the fa­mil­iar was a fleet­ing feel­ing.

The bliss fol­low­ing my 708-foot jump in South Africa lasted sec­onds be­fore I began to panic that I was dan­gling hun­dreds of feet above rocks and river. How­ever un­plugged Uganda was, it was wrought with post-con­flict re­cov­ery. And that free­dom I ex­pe­ri­enced on the open road of Amer­ica’s west­ern fron­tier was often spent gaz­ing out the win­dow of my car at the miles of pre­served In­dian reser­va­tions nes­tled among arid land and fast food restau­rants.

My es­cape from fa­mil­iar­ity led me back to just that. The ad­ven­ture was tem­po­rary and never as idyl­lic as it first ap­peared.

A year ago, I put my trav­els on hold and began my most dar­ing ad­ven­ture to date: liv­ing at home. It has been the most painful, mun­dane, and frus­trat­ing ad­ven­ture yet, but the jour­ney has never been more ful­fill­ing. Un­like the utopian fan­tasies that filled my mind prior to my other ad­ven­tures, I began this one ex­pect­ing to be dis­ap­pointed.

The word ad­ven­ture im­plies an ex­pe­ri­ence that in­volves some kind of risk or dan­ger, which leads this ex­pe­ri­ence to be ex­cit­ing. Con­fronting the un­pleas­ant re­al­i­ties of home might not seem as dan­ger­ous as jump­ing off a bridge, but the risk is just as ter­ri­fy­ing. What if some­thing goes wrong?

The ex­cite­ment I’ve felt liv­ing at home has come from tak­ing the risk, ac­cept­ing fail­ure, rec­on­cil­ing with my past, mak­ing de­ci­sions about my fu­ture, and, above all, learn­ing to be pre­sent. My usual ex­pe­ri­ence with home life had en­tailed dwelling on pain, wal­low­ing in bore­dom, and ag­o­niz­ing over the un­cer­tain­ties of my pro­fes­sional and per­sonal lives. Be­cause of this, I had de­vel­oped a habit of think­ing too much — ex­pect­ing too much, fear­ing too much, an­tic­i­pat­ing too much, and so on. It’s that state of dis­con­tent, which comes from an in­abil­ity to value life hap­pen­ings as they come and as they are.

When I began this ad­ven­ture of liv­ing at home, I didn’t have a plan. I’ve had to im­pro­vise and think crit­i­cally. I even put my es­capism into prac­tice again — get­ting lost in my thoughts in the Smoky Moun­tains, jour­nal­ing under a bud­ding tree at the park, re­dis­cov­er­ing the charm of down­town Knoxville. This time, though, I didn’t es­cape with ex­pec­ta­tions; I es­caped to ex­pe­ri­ence some­where. That is, ap­pre­ci­at­ing the beauty of what I saw or felt as I ex­pe­ri­enced it: the moun­tain veg­e­ta­tion, the tran­quil­ity of spring­time shade, the warmth of local ar­ti­sans. Noth­ing more. Noth­ing less.

I had had a habit of not being sat­is­fied with things as they were, and this led me to find mean­ing or beauty where it didn’t nec­es­sar­ily exist. I learned in­stead that the trees did not im­part ad­vice as I walked by. The shade was not read­ing over my shoul­der. The Knoxville ar­ti­sans did not lead per­fectly sim­ple lives. There was beauty, but I came to re­al­ize that there was also un­pleas­ant­ness. All of it was re­al­ity. And that in it­self was worth cher­ish­ing.

I learned to in­cor­po­rate this wis­dom into the life from which I was con­stantly run­ning away. The pain, stress, and te­dium at home didn’t need to be beau­ti­ful for me to ap­pre­ci­ate them. They were fa­mil­iar re­al­i­ties that I needed to ac­cept, work through, and learn from.

In doing this, I have begun to rec­og­nize my role as an ac­tive par­tic­i­pant in my life. I started to find that my yearn­ing for some­thing more than I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing caused me to live a pas­sive life. It was a life I often spent wait­ing to be wowed. As a re­sult, I strug­gled to ac­knowl­edge every­day thrills and tri­als as op­por­tu­ni­ties for self-aware­ness and en­riched per­spec­tive.

Hav­ing this in­sight be­fore­hand would have al­lowed me to un­der­stand that my trip to Tunisia wasn’t going to be a magic car­pet ride. It’s a place with help­ful strangers, scam artists, mini-skirts, busi­ness suits, nat­ural won­ders, sky­scrap­ers, an­cient ar­ti­facts, and tacky nov­elty gifts. Though Tunisia’s essence was unique, its sub­stance re­sem­bled that of many other places I had seen. Had I an­tic­i­pated this in­stead of the fan­tasies I cre­ated of Ara­bian nights in what I thought was an un­touched part of the world, I don’t think I would have been as dis­ap­pointed as I was.

I think per­haps I would have ap­pre­ci­ated the fa­mil­iar­i­ties and neg­a­tive quirks as part of the fab­ric that made Tunisia beau­ti­ful in it­self. If I in­stead found them ugly, that would have been fine, too; they would have been real feel­ings to­wards real ob­ser­va­tions. I would have been pre­sent, let­ting my feet sink into the rust-or­ange sand as the evening breeze rus­tled my own tagel­must and kissed my cheek.

I would not have imag­ined the spices I smelled or the whis­pers of by­gone ad­ven­tur­ers I heard in the wind. In­stead, I would have rec­og­nized the splen­dor of that breeze for what it was: crisp, clean, com­fort­ing. Over mil­lions of years, it had worked the sand into a fine dust.

Per­haps rel­ish­ing this re­al­ity would have drawn my in­ter­est away from the desert-rider. Feel­ing the in­com­pre­hen­si­ble an­tiq­uity of the desert be­neath my feet would’ve been all that I would’ve needed to have been sat­is­fied.

“Travel is only glam­orous in ret­ro­spect,” ac­cord­ing to travel writer Paul Th­er­oux. That had been true of my trav­els. I wrote home about the stereo­types of each des­ti­na­tion, often gloss­ing over or leav­ing out less-in­ter­est­ing truths. It was what I felt my read­ers wanted to read. It is what I felt I would want to read in my jour­nals in rem­i­nis­cence of my youth’s ex­ploits many years from now. More often than not, though, I wit­nessed non-stereo­types, like Eu­ro­peans de­vour­ing Big Macs and Africans chat­ting away on cell phones.

Ex­pe­ri­enc­ing home has en­abled me to em­brace fa­mil­iar­ity as part of an ad­ven­ture’s re­al­ity. In doing so, I have learned to value ex­pe­ri­ences in the pre­sent and look back on them as they re­ally were — glam­orous or not.

Ret­ro­spec­tive long­ing has not only falsely glo­ri­fied my past trav­els, but it has also caused me to an­tic­i­pate this ide­al­ism in sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ences, in­clud­ing my every­day ad­ven­tures. With this knowl­edge, I in­tend to set aside ex­pec­ta­tions and rec­og­nize that ad­ven­ture is not about the ex­otic­ness or the dan­ger or the fairy­tale. The most thrilling ad­ven­ture comes from sa­vor­ing ac­tual beauty, un­der­stand­ing ac­tual ug­li­ness, and trea­sur­ing truth. At that point, an ex­pe­ri­ence doesn’t need to be glam­orous in hind­sight, fore­sight, or at pre­sent; it just needs to be what it is.