an adventurer’s creed

I want to be a woman who does things. I want to be where the adventure is, because I take it with me wherever I go, because I want to be someone who says yes more than they say no. I want to be someone who knows when to move and when to linger - someone who stops to notice the daylight and the way it hangs heavy after a storm, someone who runs unafraid towards good things,  someone who enjoys the richness of even the day-to-day hustle and bustle of it all, someone who writes poetry in her head while she brushes her teeth each morning because she can and because poetry is beautiful and because dental hygiene is important and multitasking is good.

I want to be someone who tries new things for no other reason than because they are new. I want to be someone who makes mistakes, because at least that means I’m doing something. I want to be someone who, from time to time, stumbles into moments of brilliance, because she was never afraid of failing, because she was never done trying. Because I am someone who believed her momma when she said, "you can’t do anything worth doing with out messing up a few times first."

and I don’t want to be chained down in absolutes, the black or white of it, because freedom, I have found, is a brilliant shade of grey and that just so happens to be my favorite color anyway.

I want to keep being the girl who kisses the boy in the library, arms around his neck, laughing loudly when we should be whispering, next to the 1954 edition of Who’s Who of American Business Commerce. And as the angry librarian comes hurrying along to kick us out, we race past a thousand rows of faded blue encyopedias documenting all the people who dared to be the people who do things, all the strangers who decided to actually get up and live their lives, all the explorers who traveled entire oceans by nothing more than an extra measure of insanity and a small incessant hope that there is always more to discover.

I vow to get kicked out of every library I ever enter, because something tells me that the fools that made it to the list of the Who’s Who of Dreaming never entertained the idea of following rules and whispering in a hushed voice in the “no talking section” of a stuffy old building full of stories I’d rather live than read anyway.

Yeah I want to be that woman who chases down adventure instead of waiting for it to arrive finally at her doorstep. I want to be that woman who sees an opportunity to dance when the rain starts falling hard. I want to be wild and untamed and reckless for good things. I want to be the woman of courage, of boldness, of whimsy that I was born to be. I want to sing louder, I want dance harder, I want to breathe deeper.  I want to be brave and to be free, running through libraries, writing poetry in my head, splashing in puddles, laughing as I go.

Because I am convinced that to be anything less than a dreamer-who-keeps-dreaming simply would not, could not, be enough fun.