Every wall in my house is a different shade of cream. A coaster-using, church-going, a “How was everyone’s day?” at the dinner table type household. Your average American dream. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because living in a family that is reluctant to take bold chances on deep red wall colors and water rings on coffee tables, it’s easier to understand how small and methodical settings in life can become adventurous.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy-Spirit,” The priest slowly motioned his flat-palmed hand to complete the sign of the cross. The pews creaked as the abiding churchgoers braced themselves for the next words out of the echoing microphone. I sat, choking on the thick musk of incense that filled the isle, in fear of coughing before the priest could speak the second sentence. And as the parish opened the pages of their missals, which trailed a scent of old library book pages throughout the church, I opened my imagination to the lonely people amongst me. The parish prayed and I praised the thoughts in my mind. Specifically, the old man that sat in front of me on Sunday morning mass.

That Sunday, I sat in my pew adding fictional details to this man’s life story using the intricate lines of his face, the wrinkles on his skin and his calloused hands. I sat and tried to grasp every second out of this man’s seemingly mundane life. He wore grey. A grey-haired comb-over, dark grey suit, and grey eyes that sunk into his thin skin. But, of all things, the most apparent was his grey demeanor that, in my imagination, made up his grey life. He whittled his rosary beads between his thumbs and pointer fingers. And while he stared at his beads in his dry and overworked hands, I could almost hear his pleading thoughts for God to be his savior.

“The peace of the Lord be with you always,” my eyes veered to the front of the room, “Let us offer each other the sign of peace.” The man turned around, reached out his hand and, to my surprise, smiled brightly saying, “Peace be with you.”

With his smile, that proved my depiction of his life so wrong, came the realization that there is sentiment of adventure in the daily trivialities of life. When I think of this man’s wrinkled and weathered hands, I do not see a life long gone as I once did in his fictional life I made for him. Rather, I see the peaks of the different milestones he had climbed in his life. I see the use of his palms holding his bible that had once held his daughter's head when she was a newborn, or the hands that held his wife’s when she was in the hospital before she passed. I see a life well lived. “Mundane” and somehow he is happy.

My point is, I was wrong about this man’s life. And sometimes, most times, I am wrong to judge mundane things as something less than fabulous. Because in most cases, it is probably these daily things that will make up my smile when I am the age of this elderly man. Although our daily trivialities are things that we roll our eyes at or seemingly hate, sometimes it is these things that bring us the most happiness and maybe even is the reason behind our appreciation of adventure.

Now, I paint my house’s cream walls with pictures of my father when he used to go camping every summer with his father. I paint my walls with pictures of my grandmother holding me for the first time. When I changed my mindset, soon, my home was painted with more than just an average beige, but with vibrant yellows of the happiness my family gives me every day and majestic purples of the love I have for them. Now, I believe you can illustrate adventure by the wrinkles on your hands, by that old coffee stain on the arm of your couch, and by the laughs that echo through your home.

And I think this way about life as well. We need to remember to see the little sweet things in life as something that is essential to your life adventure and your life happiness. It’s something we take for granted, but it is something so well needed in our lives. Life isn’t mundane if you make the memories worth it. Adventure isn’t always measured by the number of countries you visit or by the amount of strangers you encounter. It can simply be measured by late night conversations on your kitchen floor, the times you laugh so hard you cry and, definitely, by the times you spend talking to your family at the dinner table, asking them how their day went.