Craig Safan, “The Last Starfighter”

Sometimes you have to make believe. There are days when you will wake up and all you can see out of your window is the harsh light of day, a cold reality that appears to promise disappointment and a plodding march through your time on Earth. Those are your thoughts when you first get up; your morning stretches are punctuated by a crushing sense of inevitability.

This scenario has probably no basis in truth, but your mind is convinced. No reason to go out today, it says. There’s nothing that could make it better.

You know different. You are, at your core, the kid who dreamed. Every child dreams in one way or another. We find the library and ensconce ourselves in a hundred different imagined worlds, we head to the backyard and declare ourselves great sportsmen and spies and pirates and heroes and villains, we look up into the city around us and see monsters and myths growing out of the walls. Our days begin with the why-not rather than the why-bother.

And so when we arise with a sour disposition and an idea that there’s no reason to venture past our bedrooms, we trick our brains the same we we did as children. We tell it that adventure is out there. Honestly, it is. Between your front door and your office, from the memo you have to send out first thing to the shirts you have to grab from the dry cleaner, with every phone call you take or email to which you respond, there are a hundred thousand variables. Your life is going to be measurably different than you think when you get out of bed, even if it is in smaller ways than you expect. Today you might not fly that plane all the way to the Nationals, you might not break the Starfighter record, you may not find that little blue box that takes you all the way through time and space.

But you might.

Every step is another chance for adventure. Don’t let that disbelieving brain of yours miss the opportunities.