Huahine 11 Aug 2010 16.7640S 150.9604W
Back to our solitary sailing life. Back to the familiarity of constant change. There is something cozy about settling back in with my own thoughts, my own observations. This life provides me with a quiet that allows me to hear my own voice, and the voices of others are filtered by my imagination. Somehow the constant talk and vocalizing and social interactions of “landlife” drowns out my own thinking. I’ll say things that I’m not sure I mean, but having said them they start to seem real. Some of the things I say aloud are real, some are only half-baked ideas, some are phrases intent on pleasing the audience at hand. I find myself spending a lot of time attempting to explain the choices we’ve made, attempting to justify this life. The verbal world leaves little room for editing, revising, rewriting, and the verbal justifications are ones designed so that others can relate and connect with our choice to do this – not necessarily the real reasons, which are a more complex tapestry of desire, circumstance, ego and a search for life satisfaction. And what am I finding out here? No real earth shattering answers to life’s questions. Mostly life just keeps following us wherever we go: the chores, the parent/child power struggles, the challenges. Indecision, guilt, frustration, joy, satisfaction, pride – all continue to exist in pretty much the same doses as before, only now I have more time to reflect on them; which means sometimes I wallow in the negative ones more than I should, but sometimes the time for reflection shows me a clearer path to contentment. One of the biggest differences of a sailing life to a worker’s life, a thing that makes this all worthwhile, is the constant presence of tremendous natural beauty, a beauty which changes dramatically as we navigate further. Juxtaposing all of life’s cornucopia of moments with the surprises and images nature’s changing landscape offers, enhances the joyous moments and maybe it softens the challenging moments, or if it doesn’t soften them, at least the natural beauty offers a tremendous salve for any wounds the challenges inflict. Why does change, our constant movement, seem to enhance our appreciation of the beauty around us? If we stop, at what point do we forget to be awestruck by this beautiful world, and start to focus on it’s dark sides? When we spend a lot of time with someone, at what point do we forget to be amazed by their competencies, and start to see only weaknesses? I don’t think you have to sail across oceans constantly saying hello and goodbye to beautiful people and places to press that reset button, but it’s a powerfully effective method.
We had a truly beautiful sail from Moorea to Huahine, night before last. We’ve gone from being surrounded by family and friends in a breathtaking anchorage, to being alone in a breathtaking anchorage. Next stop Suwarrow, a remote atoll in the Cook Islands. We’ll leave here as soon as the wind is not on our nose.
xoxomo