The Secret Life of ... You

This past weekend I watched the movie “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” To give a quick summary, without giving away any details, Walter Mitty is responsible for the negatives from film cameras at Life Magazine. For the last print edition of Life Magazine, he needs to find the negative which will be the cover photo. In pursuit of negative #25, Mitty embarks on a series of adventures that are far of his normal character and life.

 

Or at least there’s enough in the movie to make it seem that these adventures are out of character – or are they really?

 

We all have secret lives. It’s not so much that we keep what we do a secret, but most people don’t know about what we really do. After all, how can we ever describe all our adventures and what they really mean, or what it was really like. For some, even, these adventures just become part of life; they don’t seem like adventures to us, they are just what we do.

 

As part of the movie, Mitty is on the eHarmony dating site and the representatives from the site are trying to fill out his adventures and life. Mitty is a quiet character so entire trip becomes a single sentence. His big adventure into Pakistan and the Himalayas comes down to ‘hiking in the Himalayas’ in text format, but the vivid experience he had was far more than that, and had a far greater impact on his life.

 

In my life, I’ve had dozens of adventures both at home and when traveling. On a riverboat on the Amazon River, running in Tanzania, a five-day trip to Australia to meet a woman, cycling under a full moon in France – and so many more. Each one is a full tale itself – the preparation, the people, the environment, the mystery, the adventure, what it meant. Yet each one became a few words in a sentence.

 

A few people know some details about Mitty’s adventures, and a few people know some details about some of my adventures. I’m sure the same is true of you.

The details aren’t the point though. As you watch Mitty, you do see a change in who he is, how he walks, how he carries himself. The adventure is part of the journey into fullness. That’s the same for me. What kind of adventures have you had? What are the details you remember and would want to share? Most importantly – how are you different because of that? What is your secret life and what does it reveal?