In the summer of 2002, about a week before Doug and I took off on our sailing trip from Seattle to Mexico, he pulled me aside to talk to me about what a buzzkill I could expect our impending departure to be. At the time I was like “thanks a lot” but in retrospect it was quite insightful of him to have this talk with me.
Essentially his message was that with any trip like we were about to set off on, there is a ton of energy leading up to the departure. Loads of planning, organizing, cataloging, and repairing… not to mention all the emotions, the goodbyes, the human stuff.
But when travel day comes,
and you happen to be leaving on a sailboat as opposed to an airplane or car, you pretty much untie from the dock and then you’re still there. Just slowly backing away. Waving. Like Forrest to Lieutenant Dan. And an hour later you’re just now at the edge of the marina, and they could even still see your mast from where they sent you off, if they were standing there any longer, but they aren’t. They took off before you even passed B dock.
Ten hours later, you’re perhaps a 7 minute drive from where you started, and the first night of your trip is sometimes punctuated by dinner with the very same friends who sent you off earlier that day. They just drive up to the next marina and enjoy the seafood special with you one last time.
He was right, it was potentially a real buzzkill but he set my expectations and I appreciated it.
I needed Doug to tell me this,
because I needed to learn to respect our pace, and settle into it. Cruising is its own brand of sailing. Speed is not even remotely the focus. You’re living this life, this is a typical day ending in “Y”, and it’s important to be safe, well-prepared, and generally “on it,” but there is no need to rush. The wind is what it is, and your job is just to work with those conditions. One of the main responsibilities as a sailor is to respect your pace.
It was tough for a 28 year old me to settle in with that pace. Sometimes we would turn on the motor just so I would feel better about going somewhere. Doug didn’t care how fast we went, because he knew we would arrive when we got there. I’m not sure why I cared, especially because, over the course of 9+ months of constant movement, sometimes faster and sometimes slower, it just doesn’t matter that much. We made it pretty far, but no one particular moment or day of sailing matters that much. It’s the gentle perpetual forward motion that gets you down the next leg of the coast.
As with many things in life, consistency is key.
But I know a lot of us feel like if we’re not busy doing something or producing something or answering to someone or being needed by someone then we’re wasting time somehow. And it’s a common notion that wasting time is bad. We get antsy, restless. It’s better to be busy, even if you’re doing something that by many accounts is totally wasting time, like watching TV, than it is to just sit there and let your mind wander. To just be with whatever is happening is not a thing that many of us seem inclined toward or even able to consider.
Lately I think about that talk with Doug, and the first day of our sailing trip together, because at the moment I’m leaving on another one of those slow burn kind of trips where I may be already on my way but in reality I’m still here. Waving. I’ll be traveling a lot over the next 1-2 years, so I’m not in my apartment any longer, but I still have it through March. It’s just holding stuff until people come and get it. It’s really expensive storage. And I’m just moving around Vallarta this month, caring for local people’s dogs and houses. So that means I’m on my way, but in reality I’m still totally visible, out here at the edge of the marina (literally and figuratively). And later today I’ll have lunch with a friend, a great big seafood special, at our favorite place to eat together, because I’m still here even though I am on my way.
This is the pace, this is my pace, and it’s moving at the exact rate that it is. My job is just to live it.
I think a lot right now about how we have to embrace our own pace in life if we have any hope of truly being present in it. We can’t compare our siblings, friends, or even our colleagues to ourselves. Their trip just is not the same as ours, and it does us no favors at all to start in with the “I should be at this stage or that one by now” business.
Same with things like traffic. Why do we sit in traffic, bitching about all the traffic? Why do we get so indignant, like this slow traffic is a personal slight or something? Like the pace should be faster because we said it should be? LOL. What is fast enough then? When is enough, enough? Why do we think that’s up to us?
No matter what it is in life, the truth is that we’ll get there whenever we get there. And the getting there will happen through constant, intentional, forward momentum. We can make so much in life a whole lot easier on ourselves if we learn to just be where we are and do what needs doing and feel what it feels like to be here while now is happening. Let now feel however it feels, let it take however long it takes. If you’ve done your part, that’s all you can do.
Lately when I find myself anxious because the pace is wrong for me, I remind myself that whatever is happening right now is what we’re doing. This is my pace, and my real work is not to fight it at all. It’s to make it look easy.
Peace and love to you, from across the marina Universe,
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