Racing Toward the Great Adventure with
Little or No Preparation
By Frederick Gary Hareland, East Sierra Branch
If you are an Indiana Jones fan, then you probably remember what his Chinese accomplice told him with his dying words after being shot early on in the movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
For all you others, I’ll quote it for your benefit: “I have followed you on many adventurers yet into the great unknown mystery, I go first, Indy.”
Death has been called many things, but the real question for all men is are they prepared for their final launch into eternity?
There is a gentlemen’s adventure club which meets monthly in downtown Los Angeles and has a membership consisting of men from all walks of life, professions, and social and economic strata but with lots of dentists sprinkled in. These guys have literally been everywhere and done it all, and love nothing better than to share their exploits and adventures with fellow members.
This is a rather tight-knit exclusive club, and just a small sampling of their past and present members includes such luminaries as General Jimmy Doolittle, astronaut Gordon Cooper, director Cecil B. DeMille and bathyscaphe Trieste pilot Don Walsh who dived to the record depth of 35,800 feet with Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard.
The club also has its share of doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, writers, Hollywood types, and of course dentists. I myself am not a bona fide member but can be considered a type of club groupie.
When one of the distinguished members dies and passes on into eternity, the club monthly magazine sadly and dutifully announces that said member has gone on to the “Greatest Adventure.” The deceased one may have climbed Mount Everest, sailed the oceans of the world, gone into space or to the bottom of the sea . . . all endeavors requiring years of meticulous planning and preparation.
The late Lord John Hunt, leader of the 1953 Everest Expedition, said the planning and logistics of that pivotal expedition assumed the proportions of a military campaign. I sometimes wonder to myself if they prepared at all for the Greatest Adventure of all … I’m not judging … I’m just wondering out loud.
I was first made aware of the importance of planning and preparation while I was a teenage member of the Boy Scouts of America. After all, their very motto is “Be Prepared.” This early recognition of the importance of P&P was reinforced by my time spent in the US Coast Guard whose motto is “Always Ready.”
Finally, a stint in the California Air National Guard, where I worked as a Life Support Technician teaching crew members egress and survival, introduced me to the “5Ps” — Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance! All this talk about planning leads us to the really big question of life — have you planned for eternity?
I am reminded of an old saying of one of my favorite pastors of the past, who himself
has long since gone on to the great adventure. Pastor Freeman used to remind his congregation to remember that there is more to life than living and more to death than dying!
Not preaching … Just some food for thought and a word to the wise.
This essay first appeared in the September 2007 Writers of the Purple Sage,
newsletter of the East Sierra Branch.