The burgeoning reality: It pays to play unbridled
The recreation economy grows out of a less exciting boom, the number of Americans welded to workstations. More and more of us are frozen in statue formation these days, so wrapped up in cerebral ether -- analyzing, reanalyzing, dissecting, speculating -- that we’re just going through the motions of life from the neck down. One powerful antidote to the Preparation H sweepstakes: immersion into active outdoor pursuits.
Paddling, pedaling or carving powder can spring us from the headlock into something our whole bodies can feel. The action reminds us that, from our big toes to our long thighs, we were born to move, courtesy of our hunter-gatherer anatomy. Calcification wasn’t in the blueprint. What is, say experts, is grabbing fistfuls of full-contact experience.
Direct experience breaks through the layers of cranial overload that keep us in suspended animation -- and wondering if something’s missing in our world, like, say, a little thing called life. When you’re flashing through rapids on the Snake River or clinging to a crack on the face of Half Dome, there’s no doubt that you’re no longer e-mailing it in; you’re up to your scalp in the real thing.
The juice of immersion goes beyond adrenaline to transport us to an exotic place we seldom visit: the present tense. The action on a frothing river or buttress traverse focuses concentration so intently that it screens out everything else. Social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi maintains that total engagement in participatory activities produces life at its most satisfying because these times “add up to a sense of mastery -- or perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the content of life -- that comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can conceivably imagine.”
It’s the revenge of the glutes. As much as we think that all personal value flows from professional success, the science shows that the biggest payoff to self-worth comes from activities done for their own sake, not for status or someone else’s scorecard. Besides the physical exhilaration and health benefits, outdoor adventures deliver an increased sense of confidence, esteem, positive mood, what Dr. David Cumes (“Inner Passages/Outer Journeys”) calls “wilderness rapture,” and an item seldom seen in the battle of the iron posteriors -- life contents you’ve determined, the real bottom line of the recreation economy.
Joe Robinson is the author of “Work to Live” (Perigee).
