Bon Vivant Manifesto
a home at last.
I remember exactly where I was, in the little town of Mto Wa Mbu, Tanzania in the summer of 2016, when I first scrawled some of the words that would eventually become the Bon Vivant Manifesto. I remember the journal, the off-kilter bullets, the squiggly line I drew down the center to create a new column. I remember the wonderful group of students I was leading on a trip for Moondance Adventures, and my remarkable co-leader. I remember the unfathomably welcoming spirit of Tanzanian people, which played no small role in buoying me over to a lounge chair to scribble some inspired words. Karibu sana…
What I don’t remember is putting a later version on the wall at the Knotty Pine in Driggs, Idaho. And yet, that’s where I’m told it was found 3 years later by a man who was at that time waffling over his keynote speech as Moondance’s new COO. He was discussing the direction of his speech, and considering reading “this thing I found above a urinal in Idaho.” I was back for another summer with Moondance, at our staff training event in North Carolina, when the connection was made. That was the first time I realized “this thing” had a life of its own.
It was, from the get-go, essentially just an amalgam of overheard sayings and scraped-together, had or imagined experiences that seemed to unite the type of people I loved most. To anyone that seemed to connect with the words, I always used to say, “Well, you wrote it.” I still say that.
As such, for a long while I put it out there into the wild blue yonder of coffee shops and hostels and public library bulletin boards without an attribution. I read it around fires and on top of mountains without mentioning I penned it. Maybe the anonymity felt honest. Maybe I was scared to claim it. Either way, like seeds to the wind, these words have found their way into many nooks and crannies and strange corners of the world. This was the doing of not my hands alone, but a ragtag cabal of dirty-headed life-livers who felt called to send it on down the river. Asante sana…
It lives in wallets, first aid kits and quote books, to be read and chanted and stomped about in moments of reverie and wonder (outside, I hope). It’s been incorporated into outdoor ed curriculums. The convictions therein have echoed off of canyon walls and alpine cirques in many continents. It’s even found it’s way in ink onto the back of someone’s arm!
It feels to me, somehow, like a living thing. And I know that life has been breathed into it by a world far beyond me. I’m thankful for that. And it feels like an old friend—one I’ve crossed paths with many times, that I imagine, like me, has grown somewhat weary of globetrotting. Perhaps it feels called to put down roots, to nurture a garden at last. And I hope, like me, it’ll ceaselessly follow its heart into some form of exploration, and also find a place to rest from time to time. I guess that’s what this is—a place for the manifesto to rest. A place to return and to be visited and hear stories of risk and adventure and fullness. A home.
So here it is. And remember, if it resonates, you wrote it.
