Going Forward Into the Unknown

February 10, 2026

The essential feature of adventure is that it is a going forward into unknown territory. Agnes Martin

I keep coming back to that idea because it strips adventure of all its marketing. No sweeping music. No triumphant pose on a mountaintop. Just movement. Forward. Without a map that promises everything will work out.

Going into the unknown sounds romantic until you actually have to do it. Then it mostly feels like standing at the edge of something with incomplete information, a mild sense of dread, and a voice in your head asking if you are being brave or just reckless.

Most of us do not think of our lives as adventures. We think of them as schedules. Responsibilities. Things that need to be handled. Adventure feels like a luxury for people with more time or fewer obligations. But the truth is that we step into unknown territory all the time. We just do not label it that way.

A new job. A hard conversation. A diagnosis. A season where the rules quietly change and no one sends out a memo.

That is the unknown showing up without a backpack or a trailhead sign.

Agnes Martin’s line does something important. It reminds us that adventure is not defined by danger or drama. It is defined by direction. You are either moving forward or you are standing still trying to negotiate certainty out of a world that does not offer it.

Most of us are not afraid of effort. We are afraid of not knowing if the effort will matter.

That is where we get stuck.

We tell ourselves we will take the step once we have more clarity. Once the path is visible. Once we feel ready. But readiness is usually just familiarity wearing a nicer outfit. The unknown, by definition, does not let you rehearse.

I have written before about how distance and uncertainty hold a strange kind of pull. In The Magic in the Distance: Why We Love the Great Unknown, I talked about how the unknown invites us forward precisely because it does not resolve itself in advance. We move not because we are certain, but because something ahead feels alive.

I have noticed that the moments that changed me the most did not come with confidence. They came with a decision to move anyway. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes clumsily. Often with a backup plan that turned out to be useless.

Adventure, in this sense, is not bold. It is honest.

It admits that you cannot see the whole road and chooses to walk it anyway.

There is a quiet courage in that kind of forward motion. It does not announce itself. It does not demand applause. It just keeps going.

We tend to overestimate how much certainty other people have. From the outside, their choices look intentional and well planned. From the inside, they are usually doing the same math we are, just with different numbers. What they are not doing is waiting for a guarantee.

Guarantees are rare. Regret is common. Movement sits somewhere in between.

When you are going into unknown territory, you are forced to pay attention. You cannot operate on autopilot. Every step asks something of you. Every decision teaches you what you value and what you are willing to carry.

That is part of why it feels uncomfortable. The unknown removes our shortcuts.

It also removes some of our illusions.

Risk does that too. Not the dramatic kind, but the quiet, personal kind. I explored this more in Embrace the Unknown: Why Taking Risks Leads to Growth, where the real change was not about winning or losing, but about who you become once you stop outsourcing your courage to certainty.

You find out quickly what you miss, what you need, and what you can let go of. You discover that you are more adaptable than you thought and also more attached to certain comforts than you realized.

None of that shows up in the highlight reel version of adventure, but it is the part that actually shapes you.

There is also grief in going forward. Even when the next step is right, it often means leaving something behind. A version of yourself. A familiar routine. A story you told about how things were supposed to go.

Adventure does not just add. It subtracts.

That is another reason we hesitate. Loss feels more certain than gain. You know exactly what you are giving up. You do not yet know what you will receive.

Still, the alternative is not safety. It is stagnation.

Standing still does not preserve things. It slowly erodes them. Confidence fades. Curiosity dulls. The world narrows. What once felt stable starts to feel small.

Going forward into the unknown keeps something alive in us. A sense of participation. A feeling that we are still in conversation with our own lives.

If this season feels unfamiliar or unsettled, you are not doing it wrong. You are likely just in the middle of something that cannot be rushed or rehearsed.