Quote:
Originally Posted by tsuidc
This is a quote from Sterling Hayden’s Wanderer (though he was known mostly as a movie actor he was also a highly experienced sailor/seaman) “To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea - "cruising," it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.”
I am not one of those who are lucky enough to have only limited means and marginal boats, but I do envy them for having the good fortune not to have to agonize giving up financial security, career and job which prevent many of us from going on our voyage.
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Some thoughts ....
Think back to when you were a teenager. You probably had very little expectation about what it would cost to live in the world, and your appetite for consumer goods probably only included a few pieces of clothing, a radio, some shoes, a video game, and the like, most of which was probably provided by your parents.
Now remember the day you got your first job, you probably thought wow! All this money, you'll never be able to spend it all! And it is a lot of money compared to the population of the earth, half of whom make less than 1700$us/year (high estimate), a teenager in the United States really does make a lot of money.
But that wasn't enough, was it ? Your appetites grew, you suddenly wanted a car, and that means gasoline, insurance, oil changes, and you wanted more stereo equipment, a car stereo, more clothing, blah blah blah
Before you knew it that job you had wasn't paying so much anymore, suddenly you had expenses, reasons to spend your income, and you weren't free to just leave the job anymore or you'd have to give up the car. Welcome to the world most people live in, a world where they are enslaved by their own appetite for consumer goods. Once you fall into it, you
have to work, you don't have a choice anymore, at least not in your own mind. Gone is the freedom you enjoyed as a teenager, those carefree days, gone forever!! (or are they ?)
Worse, as you go on, many people gain appetites that are even greater than their income. It usually starts with some kind of windfall of money, maybe someone dies and leaves you money, or you have an especially high income for a short period of time, for whatever reason you have a lot of money and your appetites grow to match, but then maybe that money isn't there any more, do your appetites shrink back to where they were ? No, you've been in the hot tub now, you've eaten the shrimp, drank the wine, you're hooked, you may even start to see these things as necessities, you are entitled to them, you work, you deserve it! Yet no matter how much you make, you seem to never have enough, even when something good happens and you get a better job it doesn't take you long to spend that too, always seeming to break even, or worse, end up in the hell of debt. Or maybe you are able to reduce your expenses enough that you start putting some money away, count yourself lucky if you do, because you are in the minority.
And the sad irony of all of this is that most adults end up being the people they never understood when they were teenagers. When you were young you looked at the amount of money your parents and grandparents had and made and you couldn't believe how much it was, it was a huge amount, right ? You (as a teenager) could have used that money to do anything you wanted to, go to Maui and surf all the time, get a motorcycle and drive around the country living in a tent and sleeping bag, hiking the great wilderness of Asia or North America, living in hostels while you rode trains around Europe. Yet most adults seem to barely be able to get by, their appetites have grown to such an extent that they can't live without the fancy car, all the toys, expensive memberships, modern services, their ego won't let them live without it - they've worked too hard to go without a cell phone, right ? Everyone else has one, they just wouldn't be "normal" if they tried to live without it, people might look at them funny!
People who leave on marginal boats, etc, don't have an easier time deciding to do it than someone of means, they just have more courage, and they do the hard work that it takes to control their own appetites. Many of the people who you see living on boats aren't nearly as "poor" as you might think, some of them were just smart enough to use the money they made to buy their own freedom.
I disagree with the sentiment of the quote above that having means is a curse - instead, I think it only takes a wider world view to find the excitement referred to, a world view that includes actually being free to do as you please, because if you allow for that then you begin to see the "things" of life as threats to your freedom rather than pleasures and gain. Instead of seeing the extra 10' of boat length as a good thing, it starts to look like a burden, something that is going to take up a lot of time and money. I think a lot of the challenge in life is simply allowing yourself to be happy.
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