My mind started running the moment the tires of the 757 touched down on the tarmac at MIA. Questions forgotten for the last two months under sail were reawakened by American soil –
“Where is home going to be? San Francisco? Raleigh? Overseas?”
“Should I pick up my career where I left off or take a different route?”
“What do I want out of life?”
Even my walking pace sped up by half when we got off the plane. It would have been a jog by island standards. Where was I rushing to? We had a 4 hour layover. No where to be any time soon, but we were going to get there fast any damn way.
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We were heading to Park City for Cat’s brother’s wedding. Big destination affair set under snow capped mountains, a hundred fifty people that flew in from all over the country to celebrate two magnetic young people, a real to-do. During the three evenings of parties leading up to the wedding I talked with many people, some I already knew, many of whom I’d never met. With the latter group, during the inevitable “where are you from?” or “what do you do?” I’d explain that I lived in San Francisco until recently, but am now unemployed and live on an old sailboat in the Caribbean. This drew bugged eyes and a lot of questions. The most common thing they asked was “what has been the best part of the trip so far?”
Best part?
The first time I tried to conjur up an answer I was stumped for a moment. My guess is that most people expect the answer to be the beaches, or the sunsets, or not having to wake up and grind out an hour long commute every morning. None of those even came to mind. It took some thought, but what struck me is something a little more subtle. Since we’ve started cruising, I haven’t thought about the future. If that sounds bleak, I don’t mean it to be. It’s a blessing. Unbeffudled thoughts, centered purely in the now.
At no point in my adult life have I ever, even for a weekend, stopped thinking about what’s next. It’s not always negative, not necessarily discontentment with the situation that I’ve got in hand, but a tendency to not fully immerse myself in the present because my mind is already scheming on something else. It’s even recreation at times. There’s pleasure in dreaming.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this – people have it for the next business opportunity, house, car, woman, or whatever it may be. For me it’s geography, every time. I wrote about this a while back, at the time wondering, perhaps worrying, whether this adventure would finally quiet it. And it has. I’ve been entirely content with where I am and what I’m doing.
But that mental clarity was slipping while away from the boat, and fast.
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Beyond the inherent hustle of American culture causing a refocus of priorities, I was surrounded at the wedding by a collection of remarkably talented and successful men and women. Cat’s family, the family to which they were adjoining that weekend, and all the people by which they are surrounded are exceptional. Seemingly to the last member. Successful in their educations, then successful in business, law, medicine, the military and all the non-professional pursuits as well. Marriage, athletics, social bonds, and all of them invariably gregarious and kind.
In consequence of being surrounded by so many people that were making serious moves in life, it did not feel like the right time to embrace mental myopia nor feel pride in simply being reasonably competent on a cruising sailboat. They’re the type of people that make you want to push harder. The question evolved from “what do I want out of life” during those initial hours on American soil, to “what am I doing with my life, sitting on a boat in the tropics?”
So while I would relate the revelation of this new state of mind, finding peace in the present, to those that inquired about the best part of the trip, it was disappearing as quickly as the words came out of my mouth. It was replaced by thoughts of how to get ahead. I found myself unable to relate to how I had felt on the boat just a few days prior, and contemplated our return to St. Martin. Would I shake this sudden insecurity and jump unreservedly back into the cruising lifestyle, or would I feel trapped on a boat when I should be focusing on life at home?
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We’ve back on the boat for a week now. All planned trips back to the US are complete. We have no specific intentions but to go south for a while, leaving for St. Kitts in the next couple days. I’m getting back in to the groove of life on a boat and the anxiety of home is fading. But I’m not quite there, and I’m not quite here. In between, again, with more questions than answers.
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