What's Your Next Adventure?

What an Elderly Driver Taught Me About Taking Risks

I had to triple-check the license plate when the car pulled up. But it was her, and it felt like we had no choice but to get in.

A handicap tag hung from the rearview mirror. She wore thick, black sunglasses. Her seat was pulled up as far as it could go, and she hunched over the steering wheel. Her wrists so thin that it looked they could snap at any moment. She was at least 75 years old.

We exchanged hellos and she started driving. At the first roundabout, her tires kissed the curb. The second roundabout was a little rougher, as the car pushed against the side, almost going up the curb. By the time we got to the third, I knew to brace myself. We got close to the edge, but fortunately, she turned the wheel in time to avoid it.

She wasn’t good enough to drive, let alone drive and talk at the same time. But she didn’t let that stop her. I learned that she had recently moved to Raleigh from Long Island. “I love living here,” she told us. “Although driving is hard. I can’t seem to figure out these roundabouts.”

At least she knows, I thought to myself. Wouldn’t it have been so much worse if she had no idea?

I learned that she was 91 years old and excited about this next phase of life. I felt a touch inspired and a touch envious. I’m less than half her age, and I don’t often think of life in that way. What’s my next phase of life? Well, death, I typically assume. I don’t have much more imagination than that.

I pondered that briefly and recalled what a friend recently told me about a change they’re trying to make in life. When opportunities arise, they don’t just evaluate for pragmatism and mission alignment. They now also ask themselves a new question: “What’s my next adventure?”

I find this terrifying. I’m typically thinking about how to mitigate risk and maximize efficiency. What makes the most sense? But I also find that boring and predictable, don’t you? Where’s the fun in industriousness?

Certainly we can be prudent in all the ways we already are. There’s so much we need to get done and just existing takes a lot of work. But I love this question so much—What’s my next adventure?—and I’ve realized it’s not just for the big moments.

In my own daily decision-making, where I have hundreds of choices to make, I’ve started asking myself this same question. It’s so easy to sit in front of my computer all day, writing and emailing and zooming my life away. And it’s easy to tell myself that I’m making an impact, or that I have no time for anything else. One change I’ve implemented is trying to have a small adventure each day, whether walking underneath the cherry blossoms in Central Park as I did with my daughter this morning, or saying yes to coffee with a friend who I’ve been wanting to see for months and who only lives a few blocks away, yet I just haven’t made the time because I’ve been too busy being efficient and predictable and BORING.

Sometimes, the mental barrier for me is thinking that life is too short and that I don’t have time to waste. Sometimes, it’s the opposite, that life is so long, and that we should take it easy, flowing from one moment to the next. But in meeting this 91-year-old woman, excited about the next phase of her life, I’m realizing that maybe life is neither: We don’t actually know if it will be short or long, we have no idea when death will come for us, and wouldn’t we rather be out there living life rather than sitting at our desks thinking about it?

Here’s to embracing our next adventures, big and small, even if doing so means bumping into a few roundabouts here and there.