If you’ve done a certain activity for long enough, eventually lessons will start presenting themselves to you. The lessons may not always be clear, and they may not even be noticeable at first. But through trial and error, enduring hardships, and endless questioning, the world becomes a little clearer. The life lessons that follow here are based on my experiences of whitewater rafting and being out in nature for extended periods of time. This is not to say some of these lessons wouldn’t have been learned otherwise, it’s just rafting happened to be the teacher in these instances.
You Never Know What Lies Ahead Without Scouting
Before making any serious commitment or decision, especially one that would be difficult to undue or break, be sure you know exactly what it is you’re getting yourself into. You never know what lies around the bend in the river, or life, unless you first investigate and explore it.
The Sun Illuminates and Brings Facts to Light Better Than a Bulb
If you ever have a question that needs answering, a concern that needs easing, or a problem that needs solving, many times you’ll find your solutions more easily while contemplating outdoors. Something about the fresh air, wide open spaces, and the suns warm glow allows our minds to wander more freely. It helps to let our emotions calm down and clear any clouds in our judgment.
Physical Exhaustion is Often Better than Mental
Physical exhaustion is easier for your body to deal with and recover from than being mentally tired. Physically, your muscles may be sore and ache, but after a good meal and full nights rest, your body can recover rather quickly. Being physically tired brings better sleep, the exercise helps to keep you healthy, and overall you may become happier. Your mind on the other hand does not find these benefits of being tired. After working your mind for too hard for too long, stress, anxiety, depression, confusion, and irritation can set in, all of which can be rather difficult to overcome. This is especially true over long periods of time. Your body can rest once you stop moving, your mind is not so easily turned off.
Character Is Truly Exposed When Times Are Hard
You never know the true character of a person unless their character is tried in some way. Sort of a trial by fire, you never know what someone is capable of until they are faced with difficult times to see how they react. In some cases you’ll be pleasantly surprised; in others you may be sadly let down. But none of this will be known until the person is tested in a trying fashion.
To Live Life to the Fullest Means You Have to Fully Live
Anyone who is alive can be said to be living. But living fully is entirely different, and of course depends on the person whether or not that is being achieved. People only have one shot through this life and there is no point in not living how you want to live. Living fully means following your heart, doing the things that you enjoy and bring you pleasure. Simply having a heartbeat does not mean you’re living… making your heart skip a beat however does.
Many of Our Worldly Woes and Concerns Are Meer Figments of Our Imagination
When it comes down to it, if you are truly able to consider it with an objective mind, most problems we face on a daily basis are not necessarily “real”. Many of our negative thoughts and feeling can be easily overcome through proper thought. Our thoughts create our reality, and our beliefs are the filter of our reality. If we think positively and believe fully that our thoughts are true, rarely will such negative thoughts hold any weight or meaning.
Long Term Happiness Cannot be Found or Gifted, It’s Personally Created
People mistakenly believe happiness is something you can purchase, be given, or even just wake up with. It’s somehow believed that happiness is continual and can transfer over from the day before. But that’s not the case, happiness arises from your daily activities and has to be personally generated and created every day. You become happy by doing things you enjoy, you stay happy be continuing to do those things.
Without Hard Work There Is Little to Gain to Be Proud Of
Little in the world that has value can be had or achieved for free. Typically, the more something is worth, the more that thing will cost. Hard work certainly isn’t fun, but that’s why it’s called work. Most goals people set for themeselves are valuable and rarely are they easily achieved. This is what makes achieving those goals so meaningful, it’s the fact that it wasn’t easy. Which did you find more pride in when you were in school, getting a B+ on that difficult exam you studied endlessly for, or getting a gold star for your participation in class? Chances are it would be the B+ score, because you worked hard to achieve that which gave it greater value.
Failure in Life Teaches More than Success
There is more to learn from failure than success. In fact you don’t learn much from doing something perfectly correct because you did it right the first time. The least you’ll learn is to do the same process again as it already worked. Valuable lessons are learned and built upon failure because you realize where you went wrong and figure out how to adjust to make it better. Trial and error is the classroom of life while failure is its teacher.
Fear is The Root of All Evils
Fear is stifling, cancerous, and can create most of the evils that plague people. Vanity can arise from a fear of physical appearance. Greed can arise from a fear of poverty. Arrogance can arise from a fear of not being important. Gluttony can arise from a fear of there not being enough in the future. Finally, and most importantly, you may not live fully because of your fear of death or injury.
This is not to say to put yourself into situations of unreasonable risk. But if you have a fear of flying… how much of the world can you actually visit or see? Fear is natural, but its usefulness was more prevalent when our ancestors were running from saber tooth tigers and wooly mammoths. Nowadays most of our fears don’t protect us as they once would have; rather they only help to further complicate matters. Fear makes us scared, nervous, unsure, and hesitant. If we can learn to not be afraid in the areas of our life where fear doesn’t help, than we won’t be burdened and subject to the numerous fear based evils that cause so many problems for us. This is certainly no easy task as fear can be gripping, but once we feel that grasp loosen, we’ll never want to be taken hold of again.
At Wilderness Aware Rafting, our utmost passion is being the best river rafting guides we can be. This ensures we offer the best service to our customers year after year. If you’re interested in a Colorado White Water Rafting Trip, multi-day rafting trip, or want to try whitewater rafting on the Salt River in AZ, please be sure to contact us and find out what trip offerings we have available. If by chance you care to try and be a river guide yourself, you can send us your inquiries as well!
