This isn’t about merch. It’s about a way of living. I’ve eaten more churros than I can count, in at least 53 countries. Airports, small towns, gas stations, places that probably shouldn’t legally be selling them. People started sending me pictures. And somewhere in all that traveling I realized I hadn’t just been collecting churros. I’d been searching. The churro was never the point. It was the thing in my hand while I sat across from someone I loved, in a conversation I still remember. It became a symbol for something simple: find the thing that makes you glad you’re alive, and go get it now. Don’t wait for someday. Everything here carries that idea. Wear it, and it’s a reminder. Buy it, and you’re helping me build something bigger than myself. While I’m here, it covers my living and medical expenses and gives me the chance to finish the foundational work of this movement, the books, the poems, the whole search, while I still can. After I’m gone, it becomes a conduit to causes I care about, so the search outlives me. Find your churro. Always be in search. The fuller story, if you want it. Most people who wear this already know the short version. Here’s the rest of it. My mother, Roxie, was the most beloved person in a town of 180. She loved people the way most of us only mean to. When I was nineteen, our family came apart in the way small towns never forget, and not long after, on what should have been a milestone anniversary, she was in an accident. She didn’t come back from it the way she left. For about two and a half years, I learned a kind of adulthood no class prepares you for. I transferred schools to be near her. We’d found an apartment together just days before, both of us excited about it. The last ordinary night we had was a movie and a kiss goodnight and me telling her I’d see her tomorrow. She gave me a copy of Beowulf once, and inside it she wrote, “what does not kill us makes us stronger.” I still have it. I used to carry the weight of the decision that ended her waiting. It took me years to turn it over and see it the other way: that to be loved enough for someone to make that choice for you is a rare and enormous thing. Most people never get loved like that. I did. So when I tell you the churro was never about the pastry, this is what I mean. It’s the conversations. It’s seeing the people you love as whole people. It’s the ordinary sacred moments that you don’t know are sacred until later. She’s the reason I stopped waiting for someday. The good in me has her fingerprints on it. That’s what you’re wearing. That’s what you’re part of. Always be in search. P.S. For frequently asked questions, and a bunch of answers to questions nobody ever asked, come see what’s up at alwaysbeinsearch.com. Fair warning: I tend to ramble.
