Have you seen the BBC adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days? I don’t want to spoil it, but surely the title is enough to reveal that it is about an epic journey. Watching the series provided a bridge between my last few days at home and first few back in Cambridge. (That is, when my laptop eventually passed a verdict of VPN innocence: I wasn’t an iPlayer-gobbling pirate). The series left me satisfied with the goodness of friendship, humility, forgiveness, but it also left me hungry for an adventure of my own.

It was then that I had to remind myself: life is a journey. We are all on an adventure. Some clichés, like genuine banknotes, pass the test if you hold them to the light. I want to offer some reasons why I have found it helpful to reimagine life as an adventure: our connections to direction, difficulty and people.

“Some clichés, like genuine banknotes, pass the test if you hold them to the light”

If life is an adventure, you don’t necessarily need to know your destination because you are always Somewhere. This is why I say adventure, and not journey. A journey, to me, implies having the purpose of reaching a destination. An adventure seems more open-ended, with the purpose less predefined. It is not necessarily about your direction, and is not defined by a progression from one point to another. It’s more about where you are and what is happening there.

This week, coming back to Cambridge obviously required a journey, but it is also part of an adventure; one in which I don’t really know where I’m going, but I know where I am at the moment. I guess this makes an adventure inherently mindful: relishing where we are right now, being a part of what is happening here.

But what about when that place seems less of something to relish and more a mouthful of fire? That’s when life being an adventure makes a difference, because the good and the bad are both legitimate experiences. One school break-time a friend very kindly gave me one of her mini eggs. What generosity — they are her favourites! A moment later, there were two explosions: my taste-buds, and my friend’s laughter. That mini egg was actually an incognito wasabi pea. Water! If life wasn’t an adventure, then everything in that moment would have been wrong. A trusted friend turned poisoner. A break-time turned horror-time. A mini egg turned wasabi pea. (Who would voluntarily eat those, anyway?) But if life is an adventure, a trial may seem not so bad afterwards, though in the moment it’s difficult.

“An adventure seems more open-ended, with the purpose less predefined”

It’s been said there are three types of adventure: type one, an adventure which is fun at the time; type two, an adventure which is not fun at the time but will be when you retell it; and type three, an adventure which is neither fun at the time, nor when you retell it. I find this particularly helpful for when I am unwell: I think of it as a type three adventure in which I am experiencing some sea-sickness.

Thirdly, life being an adventure helps to resolve the sadness and confusion of leaving and losing contact with friends and family. Sometimes you have fellow travellers who come the whole way with you, and sometimes they join just for a part of the adventure. And other times, just when you thought they had stopped travelling with you, you realise that they were there all along. The past few years I have had the joy of reconnecting with some old friends. Some of them I have even known since before I was born — if it’s possible to say that! Often the process of friends diverging is described as ‘growing away from each other’. The problem with this is that it implies that the end-result is a definite separation, so the beginning of unity was just a façade.

If life is an adventure, everyone is on one. Your life can still be intertwined with another’s, even if you’re in different places on your adventures at the moment. Maybe some of them really don’t manage well on boats, so will just see you when you return. Maybe others are rearing to go on horseback, but you’re a bit under the weather and would prefer the train.

To me, this week in particular I have found it helpful to remind myself that I am on an adventure. The difficulties of leaving home are part of a voyage of discovery. A nasty lurgy is instead inevitable sea-sickness. The sadness of not seeing people I love while unwell is soothed by knowing adventures bring both separation and reunion.

So — I have to grit my teeth and hide my face as I say it — but life is an adventure.