I was browsing through it trying to come up with some ideas to help with writing this article.

My aim is to try to argue that Big Adventures can pivot to Small Adventures, and that these feel more meaningful when you are trying to Live with Purpose and looking to make your Tiny Contribution to a Bigger World.

Call me lazy, or just a plain realist, but it turns out that clever people have already said these things well betterer than I can manage myself.

So call this a really lazy article, or call it a handy list of book recommendations (with affiliate links), but here is my thesis spelled out in the words of others…

• “Adventure in the grand old manner is obsolete, having been exalted to a specialist’s job or degraded to a stunt. Of course, there is still plenty of adventure of a sort to be had. You can even make it pay, with a little care; for it is easy to attract public attention to any exploit which is at once highly improbable and absolutely useless.”
  — Peter Fleming, Brazilian Adventure.

• “‘Why do you tend a flock of sheep?’
  ‘Because I like to travel.’
  The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza.
  ‘When he was a child, that man wanted to travel, too. But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside. When he’s an old man, he’s going to spend a month in Africa. He never realized that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.’”
  — Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.
• “The less you carry the more you will see, the less you spend the more you will experience.”
  — Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping.
• “We talk about making an effort, and about learning to be satisfied with very little, about doing without in order to appreciate life even more. The simple life as a door leading into one’s heart.”
  — Markus Torgeby, The Runner.
• “Convincing my ego that homespun adventures can be challenging, insightful, dirty, intense, intimate, and all-consuming might be the most courageous thing I’ve ever done.”
  — Beau Miles, The Backyard Adventurer.
• “Backyard adventuring is about concocting meaningful events and experiments that challenge me, that redefine my childhood sense of the hero’s journey, that force me to look intimately in everyday places and question how I live among others.”
  — Beau Miles, The Backyard Adventurer.
• “To appreciate all of this beauty relies upon your noticing its subtleties. To hear them, you have to slow down—way down.”
  — Bernd Heinrich, A Year in the Maine Woods.

• “Adventure must have a purpose, but it may be a purpose wholly personal to the adventurer.”
  — JRL Anderson, The Ulysses Factor.
• “When lives are long, what is the thread that connects the many transitions a person goes through? What is it that remains essentially you?”
  — Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, The 100-Year Life.
• “Making the most of a long and multi-stage life means taking transitions in your stride. Being flexible, acquiring new knowledge, exploring new ways of thinking, seeing the world from a different perspective, coming to terms with changes in power, letting go of old associates and building new networks. These are the transformational skills which call for a potentially huge shift in perspective and require real foresight.”
  — Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, The 100-Year Life.
• “Fulfillment is here in this moment anytime you act in line with your values. And you are free from the need for other people’s approval. You don’t need someone to tell you that you’ve ‘made it’.”
  — Russ Harris, The Happiness Trap.
• “Simplicity of living, as much as possible, to retain a true awareness of life. Balance of physical, intellectual, and spiritual life. Work without pressure. Space for significance and beauty. Time for solitude and sharing. Closeness to nature to strengthen understanding and faith in the intermittency of life: life of the spirit, creative life, and the life of human relationships.”
  — Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea.
• “The key to being happier is to pay more attention to what makes you happy and less attention to what does not.”
  — Paul Dolan, Happiness by Design.
• “Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”
  — Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.

• “It’s obvious to ask what’s wrong, so also ask: how did we get here? Where are we headed? And what is still working well.”
  — Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics.
• “Discussion between friends has been shown to be one of the most effective ways to increase political participation and it is also probably a good way to get people motivated to work on some of the major problems of our time.”
  — William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future.
• “Learn how to learn from those you disagree with or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.”
  — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living.
• “How does the way that I shop, eat, travel, earn a living, bank, vote and volunteer affect my personal impact on social and planetary boundaries?”
  — Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics.
• “A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.”
  — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living.
• “Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.”
  — Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
• “All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference.”
  — Brian Doyle and David James Duncan, One Long River of Song.