What I’m about to write about could be considered controversial – yet, wasn’t everything controversial and new and unknown at one point? Wouldn’t the first caveman that decided to wrap a wolf pelt around his shoulders be seen as bizarre or even abnormal among his naked peers?

I’m an explorer at heart.

There is nothing that gives me more pleasure than putting myself out there into the wild world to see and to experience everything it has to offer. I’m constantly seeking and searching for my next unknown, for my next mind expanding estatic moment of the beauity of being alive and being human.

Its something that seperates me from everybody else.

I’m willing to go through whatever is thrown at me – pain, pleasure, incarceration – for that moment of pure awe, of pure electricity poping through every single one of my nerves, of every brain synapse firing like an ochestra of chemistry and a symphany of thousands of years of nature’s perfect design. I want to do things that will change me, that will open my eyes wide and that will create revolutions within myself, uprisings against my perceptions, and insurrections to everything I know.
I want my conciousness to be altered by the absolute beauty and insanity of the world.

Everybody has their way of changing themselves and how they think, even if its only temporarily – some drink and party, some use substances, others volunteer, some go to church, and some do all of those at the same time. It’s a trancendance of the borning, the monotony, the normamality, and the binality of just existing.

Well, that’s where they’re wrong.

Existance – being alive, having a beating heart and warm blood rushing through your veins and the wild wind to your skin and the shining sun in your eyes, being here, right now – is more unimaginably beuatiful than we will ever be able to comprehend. Just being alive and awake and concious is a celebration within itself, of itself.

You learn things when the world is your church. When the wide, limitless sky is your soaring cathedral, when the songs and conversations with your friends are your sacred hyms and your prayers, when the open road is your pilgrimage, and when your own inner instinct and sense of self is your preacher – this is when you learn of the ways of your home that is yourself.

When I tell people my stories of where I’ve been, of who I’ve met, and what I’ve done they ask what movies I’ve been watching, of what stange imagination I have. Some ask me what kind of drug’s influnce I’m under when they see how I act, how I smile with an unconditional love I’ve learned that they may never expereince, how open I am to new things, how the untamed and unrestricted happiness pours from my veins, how insatable and all consuming my wanderlust can be. I wish I could show them my perscpection, that I could dump my memories and my emotions into their heads so that they could understand.

Yet, regardless, the first time somebody asked me what I was on got me thinking – thinking that the way I live is, honestly, an addiction just like anything else.

Its an addiction to life, to love, to happiness, to new things and people and places and experiences. When I’m out there exploring, when I’m out there seeking without knowing what I what I’m searching for and without knowing what I will find – that is when I really feel like I’m being the best version of me. Traveling for me is like taking a hit of some kind of the purest mind altering drug money can buy on the black market.

It’s a high, a vice, something that I will do anything – including compromising myself and my own saftey – for a fix. I get anxious and annoyed when I have to stay in any place for too long, when what I’m doing isn’t contribuiting directly to my personal growth and journey that I think I’m on. For me, being stuck is like going through a withdrawal that has all its own pain and doubts and demons as coming off any other substance or bottle.

Its almost selfish in a sense, regardless of how selfless I try to be and how I try to keep my ego in check. I try to spread my philosophy to open people up to this way of living and seeing the world – but I’m trying to change them without their permission, and some people don’t want to be changed. It becomes easy for me see my way of life and my perspective as the pinnacle, as the apex, as the goal that all humans should strive for. It’s a paradox, because here I am taking so much pleasure in exploring other cultures and places, yet these other cultures and places might not see what I’m doing as even an acceptable thing to do. I want to see it all, do it all, be it all – but what if all doesn't want to experience me?

Because, after all, isn’t perspective everything?
I’m working on this though, on finding contentment with where I am and who I’m around without having to fight the urge to take off and not look back for at least two-hundred miles. Of being concious of who I’m trying to influence and that regardless of how great I think my life is, not everybody wants to see it that way. Of finding balance between being sky high and deeply grounded.

It is this struggle that separates me, that makes me who I am: an addict of life.

A seeker of the sun and the finder of the unknown with an open heart and open mind.

A poet of the world, my words being my actions and my actions being my words.

A risk taker that can and will take it too far.

A a stretcher –  a breaker – of boundaries, a lover of diving in head first, a hunter that takes shots in the dark, of searcher of souls, a surfer of emotion, a fire starter of paradigm shifts, a pusher of conventions, a revolter of skin and bone, a rebel of monotony, a resistor of conformity, a rider of adventure, a writer of destiny, and a propitiater of life even if its only my own.

Its who I am: an explorer.

A human.