No matter the details, the story was always followed with a challenge: "Would you be willing to die for your faith?"

Looking back, it's easy to see how limited this question was. What's truly worth dying for? It's difficult to know for sure-rarely does anyone get a say in how they die and whether it's for some kind of cause. Most of us die whenever the time comes, whether we're prepared to make a statement or not.

And yet, every single day, each of us gets to answer a far more interesting question: What's worth living for? If you could only pursue one thing, what would you craft a life around and do every day? And what if real sacrifice was involved ... would you stick with it?

Dying for something is heroic. In the rare case when it happens, you go down in a blaze of glory, clutching to your morals or cause. Nice work if you can get it. Years later, Brad or Angelina will play you in the movie.

But living for something can be mundane-and therefore far more sacrificial, because seldom does anyone else notice. You just go on living, beating the drum for the thing you've chosen to value above all else. Genuinely living for something, day after day, is much more valuable than looking for the blaze of glory at the end.

So what do you think-what's truly worth living for?

"Maybe People Just Don't Know"

A wildlife veterinarian from Canada, Helene Van Doninck is on a one-woman campaign to convince hunters to switch to non-lead ammunition. Every year during hunting season, she sees a number of bald eagles who've been poisoned from swallowing lead ammunition in hunted game meat. These eagles are a national treasure and an endangered species, but many die after being exposed to the lead.

Helene believes this is entirely preventable, so she has been working intensely to convince hunting groups and local communities to adopt resolutions urging the use of non-lead ammunition. She launched the crusade after a difficult week where she watched four eagles die from poisoning. At first she was angry, but then she realized: "Maybe people just don't know there's a better way."

Helene's att.i.tude is that this is her own quest and she doesn't need permission from anyone to pursue it. The biggest challenge she faces comes from hunters who think she's advocating for an end to hunting, which isn't the case at all. "I just want people to understand that there's an alternative," she wrote. "Sometimes I meet people who don't get it, but after a while I decided, screw it, I'm a volunteer and no one can fire me."

365 Charities

After working in the nonprofit world for fifteen years, including overseas stints in Sudan and Cambodia, Stephanie Zito was feeling discouraged. During her time with different organizations she'd seen a lot of good work and hopeful stories, but there was also a lot of bureaucracy.

Restless, she embarked on a mini-quest as a challenge to her own disbelief. For an entire year, every day she'd learn about a new person, project, or organization that was making the world a better place. She'd also make a $10 donation toward the cause, and whenever possible, write about what happened with the money. She called the project #Give10.

The financial cost for #Give10 was moderate (a total of $4,260: $10 for every day during a Leap Year, and an extra $600 in "readers' choice" donations three times during the year). Even on a nonprofit salary, it wasn't terribly difficult to come up with the money. What took work was finding the people, projects, or organizations to support.

It turned out that giving away $10 to a different recipient every day was surprisingly hard. Stephanie was working throughout Asia for much of the project, flying back and forth to Bangkok every week from her home in Phnom Penh, and often further afield to Mongolia or elsewhere. To ensure she didn't get behind, she made a rule that she wouldn't go to bed at night until she had made the donation. Some nights she'd be up until midnight in Cambodia or Thailand, straining not to fall asleep in front of the laptop. But each morning she was glad she had found someone and kept going. Taking it day by day, making it a habit, and telling the world about it were all helpful in ensuring she'd stick it out.

The response from friends and followers who read Stephanie's daily posts was interesting. Friends were supportive, as you might expect. Some followers said later that they felt guilty while reading the updates, because they weren't making any donations of their own. More positively, several people wrote to ask if it would be OK to start their own #Give10 projects and contribute for a month or even a year. One woman created a #Give25 project for her twenty-fifth birthday. Another person was quitting smoking, and decided to put the money they were saving toward charitable giving. Once in a while, someone would learn about a cause or organization through Stephanie's posts, and they'd decide to support it, too.

The quest wasn't only about giving; it was also about discovery. Looking beyond the big charities, Stephanie hoped to find lesser-known organizations, projects, and people that needed help. She supported a project called Liter of Light that helps slum villages create their own solar lighting through recycled plastic bottles. She gave to a five-year-old boy in Rochester, New York, who sold paintings online to raise money for medical research. She helped build a playground in the Philippines. Every day was a new story and a new chance to learn.

What Bothers You?

If you're trying to find your own quest, you may find it helpful to ask yourself a few questions. Some people find their quests by focusing on pa.s.sions and interests-something they love to do or parts of the world they want to explore.

If that doesn't work, though, try a different approach. Instead of asking what excites you, ask what bothers you. There is no shortage of problems in the world, but which one are you most troubled by? What problem are you able to do something about?

Miranda Gibson was troubled by industrial logging in Tasmania, so she climbed a tree and received global attention for the cause. Helene Van Doninck found her answer by focusing on hunting in her native Nova Scotia.

What bothers you?

Four hundred and forty-nine days after Miranda climbed the tree, she had to come down ... urgently. The problem wasn't a lack of commitment or a change of heart-the problem was a bushfire that had burned to within a kilometer of Miranda's tree. Nearly a year and three months had gone by since she first laid claim to the treetop and adopted a strange lifestyle of Skyping with journalists by day and sleeping with the stars at night. All of a sudden, it was all over.

During the entire time Miranda was in the tree, she wore a safety harness. When she came down, she continued wearing it until someone pointed out that it was no longer needed. A bustle of reporters and photographers awaited her arrival, and she sat by the tree holding the rope for a long time.

Finally she concluded that she'd proven her point and walked away. After spending a year in the tree, Miranda felt confident that the logging companies wouldn't dare move back in. If they did, she'd be ready and willing to do it again. Like the child who saves a single starfish on the beach, Miranda had saved a forest.

Remember Having an enemy or opponent (even an imaginary one) can keep you focused.

What's worth living for? matters more than What's worth dying for?

Understanding what bothers you is just as important as understanding what excites you.

1Howard Weaver: "In Juneau, alcohol was pretty much guaranteed at any event that started after lunch, and sometimes before."

Chapter 13.

The Long Road

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

-ABRAHAM LINCOLN Lesson: THE MIDDLE OF A QUEST CAN BE THE HARDEST PART. DON'T GIVE UP TOO SOON!

It was the largest symphony ever composed. The list of instrumentation reflected an ambition to produce nearly all the sounds of Western orchestra music for the past century. In addition to the usual requirements-a wide range of woodwinds, bra.s.s, strings, and percussion-the composer had called for a litany of lesser-known instruments. Six sets of timpani were required, four to be stationed offstage. Five choirs would a.s.semble onstage, including one children's choir. A number of unusual requests had to be fulfilled, including a thunder machine and a "bird scarer," which operated pretty much as described. Nearly two hundred instrumentalists would contribute their efforts to the two-hour production.1 It was called the Gothic Symphony. Because of its girth, and perhaps because its composer, Havergal Brian, didn't boast the same one-name fame as Beethoven or Bach, the Gothic had only been performed a few times. In fact, it hadn't been performed at all in the past thirty years, and never outside of the United Kingdom.

Gary Thorpe, the manager and DJ of a cla.s.sical music station in Brisbane, Australia, had seen the 1980 performance of the Gothic in London's Royal Albert Hall. He'd left the production feeling ecstatic. "Few people understood twentieth-century cla.s.sical music," Gary told me. "They think of it as tuneless and boring. But it's not! It's some of the most exciting music that's ever been composed."

The performance in London inspired a dream: to produce the symphony in his hometown. With a population of nearly three million people, Brisbane isn't small. Nevertheless, when you think of cla.s.sical music, chances are you think first of places such as Vienna, Rome, and Berlin-not a seaside city in faraway Australia.

"I wanted to show that Brisbane had the talent to put this on," Gary continued. "I felt it would attract the attention of the whole world if we could do it right."

The only problem was getting it done.

The sheer coordination of talent and resources was overwhelming, and, time after time, he failed. The first attempt failed for lack of an orchestra, the second for lack of funding, the third for lack of a suitable venue. The fourth time would be the charm, Gary thought-until it became clear that there was no way they could find enough choristers.

These failures happened over twenty years. Each attempt required selling the vision over and over, gathering a new team and trying to convince skeptical venue managers that this time it would work. "I just kept on pitching the Gothic to whoever would listen," Gary said. "I've been told it's not worth it, it's not a masterpiece, it's too difficult. There are reasons why it's only been performed four times in history."

The Gothic symphony was said to be cursed-a description that Gary laughed off until he spent twenty years trying to produce it.

"The hardest aspect from my point of view was to maintain the belief in the value of doing this symphony," he said.

The Leader Requires a Team (and the Team Requires a Leader)

Gary gives generous credit to those who contributed to the ma.s.sive effort required to bring together hundreds of performers for a herculean symphony. He encourages others to put together a team as early as possible. "Try to involve as many talented and capable people in your quest as you can," he wrote me. "It can be lonely and dispiriting doing everything yourself."

No doubt this is true, and Gary certainly couldn't do everything himself-someone had to operate the bird scarer. But Gary was the tireless visionary who led the charge, year after year and through repeated failures. Without the team, the effort would have been in vain. Without the leader, there would have been no effort.

The long, slow grind of working toward something is all about loving the process. If you don't love the process, the grind is tough.

The grind is also a dangerous time. It's when you're tempted to give up, call it a day, or at least cut corners. Steven Pressfield, author of a dozen books, says, "The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying." So, too, for a quest. The most important thing is continuing to make progress.

Another year pa.s.sed, and Gary regrouped for his fifth attempt at producing the Gothic Symphony. Once again he gathered a team and found a promising conductor who was willing to contribute his efforts. Alas, when it came to negotiating dates with a festival coordinator, the team discovered an irreconcilable conflict with the dates. The curse had struck again!

Nine months later, Gary went back to work on the Gothic yet again. This time, a doc.u.mentary filmmaker who'd been filming Gary's efforts to bring the Gothic to Brisbane chose to give up her objectivity. After watching Gary get stuck time and time again, Veronica Fury stepped in and officially joined the team. More good news arrived in the form of a grant for $25,000-not all that the group needed to produce the ma.s.sive symphony, but a great start. An enthusiastic choir leader from Sydney also decided to join the cause, and everyone was feeling cautiously optimistic.

Alas (you knew this was coming), something went wrong again. The great choir leader from Sydney dropped out, leaving the production without a crucial component. One step forward, one step back. They canceled the booking at the performance hall. Everyone agreed that the project needed a rest.

One year later, Gary and the rest of the Brisbane team regrouped once more. This time, they were committed to seeing it through. "It's the Mount Everest of cla.s.sical music!" Gary said. "We've come to base camp a few times but always had to retreat." (Reminder: You might be excited about something even if it's not interesting to other people, and you must believe in your project even if no one else does.) After six failed attempts in twenty-eight years, it seemed that things were finally coming together. They had the conductor, a bare-bones budget, and a ragtag band of choristers that had been a.s.sembled from across the country. And then, yet another crisis arose when the venue managers called to cancel the booking. Maybe they'd heard rumors of the project's repeated failure, or maybe they just weren't thrilled about sorting out the logistics for a ma.s.sive orchestra and four separate choirs. Whatever the reason, they suddenly developed cold feet.

Was it failure yet again? No-in Gary's words, it was a call to arms. The filmmaker looked at Gary and said, "You must go in there and secure that booking."

But Gary couldn't go. After nearly three decades of hara.s.sing everyone in Brisbane, his appeals would likely be met with polite smiles and demurrals. The Gothic, Gary said, was the best-known musical piece in the city ... that had never been performed.

Gary went to the venue with the rest of the group, but waited in the lobby while everyone else went up to the meeting. For forty minutes he paced back and forth, unable to do anything. Having waited twenty-eight years, only to be threatened with losing the venue just as everything else was coming together, he felt powerless and intensely frustrated.

The rest of the group finally emerged, and as they did they flashed a thumbs-up sign. They'd persuaded the venue managers to retain the booking!

All obstacles had been cleared. Gary's day job was at a cla.s.sical music station, and he took to the airwaves to push the ticket sales. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!" he reminded his listeners.

With so many performers, from the hundreds of instrumentalists to the quartet of choirs, rehearsals were a challenge. Mastering the material was hard enough on its own-presenting it in unified fashion, with every detail in place as written by the composer long ago, was even tougher. Still, the big day finally came. There was no more time to prepare, and no going back. Game on!

How to Pay for Your Adventure

Most people who read this book have a certain amount of disposable income. You may not think of yourself as rich, but you're able to buy things you like from time to time. More important, you're able to pay for experiences. Most quests are about taking action rather than acquiring "stuff"-and most actions can be quantified into a time-and-money model where you figure out exactly what it costs, then you calculate how to pay for it.

When it comes to travel, I've learned that there are very few places on the planet that require breaking the bank to get to for a few days. Even the most expensive parts of the world can be reached for $2,500 or less. If that sum seems exorbitant, just think of it as $2 a day for three and a half years, or a bit less than $7 a day over one year. Can you save that much? If so, you can go anywhere.2 Road as Life Travel can be disorienting and unstable. You're out there in an unfamiliar place, doing new things and adopting different patterns. Sometimes, though, travel itself can provide a welcome sense of motion. Juno Kim, who left a steady job in South Korea to see the world, said that travel provided her with a foundation: One of my theories about traveling is that it helps us to be in a stable condition. There are so many reasons to travel: for holiday, getaway, challenge, adventure, hiding ... and we wish to get some answers at the end. To get a precise answer about myself, I need to be in that stable condition; I need to be happy and I need to know myself. And the best way to find those two is travel, at least it was for me.

Just as you should define your own goals and decide for yourself what const.i.tutes success, consider your own definition of stability. Is it a safe job and comfortable home of your own, or is it something else? Do you always have to choose between foreign and familiar, or can you mix it up? Juno found stability by leaving behind what was considered a much more stable lifestyle. She found her "stable condition" far from her native land.

"It Costs What Life Costs": How Different People Funded Their Projects

I asked everyone whose story is told in this book how much their project or quest cost, and how they were able to pay for it. Responses varied considerably.

Juno Kim, the twenty-seven-year-old South Korean woman, originally took her savings with her and planned to live off that money as long as it lasted. But four years and twenty-four countries later, she's actually increased her savings, thanks to her work as a freelance writer and photographer.

Scott Young, who taught himself the MIT computer science curriculum in one year, spent five days a week learning full-time, one day a week resting, and one day a week working on a business to pay the bills. Because he possessed only a few hours to devote to moneymaking efforts, he had to make those hours count. Fortunately, he'd started the business as a busy undergraduate student, so he was used to focusing on the right tasks instead of surfing the Internet all day. Despite Scott's efficiency, the MIT project required some trade-offs. "My goal during that year was to just keep the business running. As a result I didn't have much time to do business development. I didn't make any significant business expansions or improvements during that time."

Ron Avitzur worked on his graphing calculator project for free, sneaking into Apple headquarters early in the morning and staying until night. He lived frugally and ate cheap meals. "I wasn't a big spender," he told me. "But it also helped that we worked all the time."3 Mark Boyle, a man from Bristol, England, who chose to live without money for more than a year, wrote in to say that his project conveniently had zero financial costs. However, that didn't mean he was alone. After a difficult first two months, as he learned to adapt to life without money, his mutual support network grew. "The more you help people unconditionally," he said, "the more they help you back in the same spirit, but without any of the formality that money inflicts on us."

When going on a big trip, most questers chose to pay their own way, in the belief that it was their dream and they wanted to fund it themselves. However, Matt Krause, who walked across Turkey by himself, had a different idea: "I funded half of the trip with Kickstarter, and would highly recommend that people doing something outlandish in life give others the chance to partic.i.p.ate in it. If you're going to do something outlandish, there are a probably a lot of people who would like to do it, too, but don't for various reasons."

Perhaps Meghan Hicks, whose story is told more in chapter 16, put it best in describing how she pays for a lifestyle oriented around the outdoors: "I don't think I can put a price tag on it, but it costs what life costs. My boyfriend and I choose to live a simple, frugal life so that we can do things we are pa.s.sionate about."

Show Me the Money I asked, and they answered. Here are the costs of several of the quests featured in the book. All figures were provided by respondents, and in some cases they are estimates.

NAME QUEST TIME MONEY.

Tom Allen Bike from England to Iran 7 months $4,500 Nate Damm Walk across America 8 months $4,500 Travis Eneix 1,000 days of tai chi 1,000 days $0 Josh Jackson See a baseball game at every MLB stadium 28 years $100 per stadium Jia Jiang 100 Days of Rejection Therapy 100 days $0 Julie Johnson Train her own guide dog 14 months $1,500 Steve Kamb "Epic Quest of Awesome" 3+ years $40,0004 Juno Kim Travel to 20+ countries 3+ years $27,000 Matt Krause Walk across Turkey 8 months $10,000 Sasha Martin Cook a meal from every country 3 years $18,000 ($500-per-month grocery budget) Alicia Ostarello 50 dates in 50 states 9 months $25,825 Gary Thorpe Produce largest symphony in history 28 years $280,0005 The Vogel Family Bike from Alaska to Argentina 33 months $66,000 John "Maddog" Wallace Run a marathon in more than 99 countries 10+ years $250,000 Scott Young Master in 1 year the MIT curriculum 12 months $1,500 Stephanie Zito Give to 365 charities 12 months $4,260

Adventure Savings Fund