✍🏼 Adventure is divine

More adventure, more life, and the risk of missing the call

Devin Baker

May 16, 2025

Welcome back to Comma, where we work to ignite extraordinary potential - and forge the frontier together.

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Cheers,

Devin

Adventure is divine

Grit needs an upgrade.

So incomplete. Insufficient.

Grit’s better, cooler, and more evolved cousin?

A yearning for adventure.

I was listening to Jordan Peterson on Diary of a CEO earlier this year, and he said something that dramatically changed me.

Bold statement, I know.

Peterson, well-known for many things - one of which is his strong Christian faith - was asked a question by Steven Bartlett (host of DoaC) that I so deeply appreciated, because it was so clearly an authentic question. The best kind. One steeped in deep curiosity and humility, asked simply because he truly wanted to know Jordan’s answer.

He asked Jordan to describe the god that he believes in.

Tangibly. Specifically.

Is it a man? A feeling? An energy? A knowing?

I so deeply appreciate this question - I’ve long struggled with faith, in the traditional sense, and Steven’s honest pursuit of spiritual truth feels deeply familiar. I see myself in his questions.

Jordan’s answer took me by surprise.

The divine is the call to adventure.

It hit me like a gust of wind.

This idea simply feels more true to me than any other that I had heard.

It’s a concept of the spirit of the divine that I can finally feel and relate to personally.

It’s this idea that God isn’t a man in the sky, or a rigid doctrine - but the name we give to the highest possible aim of our lives, and the force within us aching to live it out.

And just about immediately, it put so many parts of the last several years (the first several of a new chapter in my life) into perspective - the highlights and struggles both.

And what came next?

The realization that that there have been many moments where I’ve been missing it.

Missing what, you might ask?

The adventure.

The adventure of the direction that I’ve chosen for this new chapter of life. And work. And relationships. And all the rest of life.

I came to the realization that so often I’ve been caught in my fears.

Fears that come with facing difficulties that accompany new chapters. Of doing something I’ve never done before. Of becoming a version of myself I’ve never been before.

And with that realization came clarity.

Clarity that fears aren’t the problem - though it can feel like that sometimes.

Clarity that I now know what the real tragedy is.

The real tragedy is all the moments that I’ve missing it.

The adventure.

Clarity that the whole point of it all is the adventure.

Thanks to Steven’s question, this has become so clear. This, I now know.

A past version of me wouldn’t have known.

That Devin from earlier in the story was busy on a different kind of adventure, for different reasons. The difference was that he was doing it not for the adventure, but for the not-so-metaphorical pot of gold on the other side.

But when I embarked on this new chapter, at the new year turning into 2023, I suddenly knew that what mattered was finding the right adventure.

I didn’t use that word at the time.

I said things like (and I quote from my journal) “I’m looking to build a day, a week, a month that I want to live forever.”

Later, as I gained some more perspective, I said things like “I’m seeking aliveness.”

But even though I didn’t use the language of adventure, I knew.

I was on an adventure, to find the the adventure of my life.

When we say yes to the call to adventure, we become someone new - someone who did not exist before embarking.

I sensed that transformation was calling, but I didn’t see just what that meant.

Now, I do.

So when Jordan spoke to that call, that invitation, that inclination, that instinct towards adventure, I knew it was right.

So now, this is what I’m building now.

A life of adventure.

First, the right adventure. (Because there are detours where we can get trapped.)

Then, that adventure, fully experienced.

I now believe that the most tragic moments aren’t the most challenging ones, but the ones where we drift off course, away from fully experiencing the adventure that calls to us.

So, note to self, and a call to you: