The Call to Adventure

I hear the call to adventure every morning.  Either the alarm goes off or the kitties go off or sometimes both simultaneously.  I do not always answer the call to adventure. There has been many a day when I renounced life, ignored the world, and stayed in bed. But most days I do get out of bed and my adventure begins with a ritual.  Most days pass seeming to be the same as the one before, but no two days are ever truly

the same.  The music, stories, art, poetry, ideas, and epiphanies that enhance my intellectual and emotional development on a daily basis, guard against true monotony.  I am always on a grand adventure in my mind and have occasion to have adventures in the traditional sense.  Last semester, I had an amazing journey of the mind and self discovery in Dr. Sexson's mythologies class.  I blogged about music, concert experiences, and documentaries that seemed to take place on another planet.  I read stories, wrote stories, heard stories, told stories.  I began to understand why I have always been so very 'in to'

Arizona.  January 16, 2012

all the things that I am 'in to'.

The call to adventure came in the form of a text message.  At the beginning of this semester I had the extreme pleasure of traveling to Arizona to see TOOL in concert and visiting Caduceus Cellars tasting room, while visiting a very dear old friend I had not seen in several years.  We shared stories that had happened since we last saw each other, we laughed at stories from our youth, we talked about stories we had read; all while living and creating a story neither one of us would ever forget.

The call to adventure came in the form of an actual phone call--imagine that!  I was recently contacted by my High School English teacher to return to the Alternative Program and speak to the students about my adventures since high school.  What are the odds of this? 1 in 3.  It was during my time at the Bridger Program that I realized, under the guidance of Dave Swingle,  that life is like a choose your own adventure novel. What will I tell these kids about my adventure that may aid in their adventure?  Perhaps I will tell them about stories within stories. Adventures within adventures.  This is not my first time returning to the Program,  I am honored that I have had the opportunity on a few occasions to share my stories with kids that are very much like myself at that age.  Some of these kids have shared their stories with me and the experience has moved me to tears.  I'll never forget the teenage girl that came up to me after my last talk at the school and told me that she had hope after hearing my stories and that she was not going to give up on her father because she now believed that people can change.  I remember thinking to myself 'it was just a story, my story and who the fuck am I?, Nobody.  But in that moment I was somebody to that girl and my honesty, my story touched her life in some way.  That is the power of our stories, the meaning of our adventure; to lean and to teach.  A life well lived is one in which the learning never ends, by continuing to learn we continue the adventure.  Everyday is an adventure because this life is an adventure.  Perhaps that is what I will tell those eager young minds, to live their adventure the best they can, to learn from the adventures of others, and when called upon to teach others based on their adventure.