Let’s be honest: there’s a 60-year-old trapped inside my 21-year-old body. In my perfect world, I’d be in bed by eleven every night, nursing a cup of Yogi tea while penning in the answers to the daily crossword. People now respond with “typical” when I just laugh at the suggestion of throwing back a few shots and raging at a frat party. My procrastination websites of choice are not Reddit or Perez Hilton, but rather lumosity.com brain training (I swear by it!) or Heidi Swanson’s vegetarian food blog, 101cookbooks. I still don’t understand YouTube. I can (and do) spend hours on end playing board games. I’m the kind of person who looks at a menu for 15 minutes, asks the waiter an average of three questions and then settles on the same thing I always order.

 

In short, I am a creature of habit. But aren’t we all? Routine, tradition, schedule: it’s so much easier to choose the comfortable inertia of what’s familiar over the uncertainty that comes from a gamble. When I know I can enjoy a lovely evening by myself watching the latest episode of Top Chef, why would I go through the hassle of picking up the phone, calling my friends and trying to figure out their plans for the night when those plans may very well fall through and leave me in the lurch? In short, it’s a much “safer,” “easier” option to accept the guaranteed payoff of Top Chef, rather than venture into the territory of an uncertain outcome.

 

Here’s the irony, though (if I’m using that word correctly). I know I’m my happiest, best self when I deviate from what’s routine.

 

My comfortable status quo tends to be solitude. Frankly, though, people annoy me sometimes. Put me in a big group of people trying to decide what to do and I literally go crazy. We’ll spend hours spinning our wheels, talking in circles, stewing over where to go, what to do, what to eat, etc. The Stanford student in me cringes at the inefficiency. And for that matter, it’s frustrating to wait on people to make up their minds only to cancel last minute. In my mind, it’s much better to avoid that whole rigmarole by doing things alone.

 

But even though I enjoy my alone time, it’s also my emotional crutch. As I learned from living alone in Paris over the summer, too much solitude is never good for anyone. Yet even though I know I need people, I still struggle to reach out.

 

That’s not everyone’s rut. One person’s rut can be another person’s adventure. But we all have our variations on the general theme, and only we know exactly what it takes to break out of our comfort zones.

 

Regardless of what your routine is, deviating from the norm will always require taking a risk. And, unfortunately, that lands you smack dab in the middle of uncertainty, a no-man’s land where no one feels particularly comfortable. Taking a risk could generate a potential failure, and, after all, don’t we like what we’re good at? So, we revert to the comfort of sitting on the couch, watching a movie instead of getting out and about, exploring all that life has to offer.

 

Every day can be an adventure. That’s one thing travel has taught me. Being in a new city for a limited amount of time makes you start to milk every second of every day for what it’s worth. You’ll run yourself ragged going from museum to museum, or from landmark to landmark. But how many of us have taken the time to explore what our own hometown or campus has to offer? It’s not that there’s nothing to do. By virtue of going to Stanford, we all get ten thousand different emails from ten thousand different groups every day advertising all sorts of cool and exciting events on campus! And if that wasn’t enough, San Francisco’s golden aura beckons us from the horizon. But even though I’m well apprised of all the current goings on in the city, life’s daily grind will most likely always trump my grand aspirations of adventure.

 

But life doesn’t have to be boring if you choosefor it to not be. There are so many opportunities to do something different or fun in every moment. From exhibits to see, mountain paths to travel, sports to try, hobbies to rekindle, new people to meet, old friends to have coffee with, different food to try — adventure is yours to create. It doesn’t have to be a big to-do if you don’t want it to be. Sometimes, it’s enough to strike up a conversation with the grocery store cashier or run a different route around campus. But it does require that you put forth the effort and take a risk, allowing yourself the freedom to try…and sometimes fail!

 

Want to place a bet on whether Leslie will actually end up going to Thursday’s senior night? Email labrian “at” stanford “dot” edu to find out!