Ready to go again

Before leaving on this trip – 27 days on a ship with only 5 brief stops, when I would talk to someone about this trip, the typical reaction was, “Sounds great, but you’d never catch me doing that”.  People would mention the monotony of day after day with nothing but an endless ocean.  Being confined to a small ship for that length of time usually doesn’t have much appeal.

I thought I’d end this blog by trying to explain why it did for me.

In our “regular” lives we have innumerable opportunities to receive information.  Television, social media, 24-hour news and sports, etc. provide a constant bombardment of data and entertainment.  Seemingly, we’re wired to seek more and more diversion.  The more we have, the more we want.  We can’t help ourselves in our addiction - an “opium for the masses”.  But, as we seek more information, more entertainment, more distraction, we spend less time assessing its ultimate importance, or reflecting on what it really means to our lives.

We all hear these critiques, but we rarely get an opportunity or the strength of will to truly escape.  This was a way to escape, to recalibrate.

Normally, we seem to be aiming our focus over the head of what’s right in front of us.  Instead, we look beyond the present and are planning the next task, worry or distraction.  On a voyage like this, time gives you the luxury of not doing that.  Rather than spending my time thinking about what’s next, it was more about focusing on what is. 

I developed a steadiness of attention, instead of dashing from thought to memory, sight to sound, plan to regret.  It was about learning to slow, to not live at the speed to which we are addicted.  Without the regular distractions or interruptions, I could give full attention to conversations or thoughts, and let things flow to their natural conclusions.

There was a rediscovered joy in being cut off from Siri and Google.  We all had to recall memories or facts with only each other to rely on.  We had to work out problems, calculations and logic without assistance.  Sometimes things would take minutes, hours or even days to figure out.  It made you use resources long buried.  It was invigorating.

Life was taken at a more granular level:  Watching the pattern of wind on the water; experiencing the dead-calm days and the choppy ones; feeling the rhythm of the ocean; watching a tanker pass in a stately glide until it fell off the edge of the horizon; watching a bird repeating the pattern of gliding along the ship seeking prey.

At home, if I spend a day or even a few hours sitting quietly, reading, writing or simply observing, I feel guilty.  I often feel like I’m neglecting tasks or chores that need to be done, and that I’m letting the day go to waste.  

On this kind of voyage, it was the opposite.  If I didn’t spend sufficient time scanning the horizon; or watching the changes in the ocean, the waves, the wind, the light; or waiting patiently on the bow for a bird, whale or ship to appear; or if I didn’t spend time reading something thought provoking or writing, then I felt like I wasted the day.  Your focus changes.  Your perspective changes.  You become more in tune with yourself and “reality”, and more divorced from the artificiality and blather that surrounds us.

Ultimately, it might not be the person who goes on 62 voyages ravenously gathering data, but it’s the person who goes on only a few, but thinks and analyzes and absorbs the experiences that ultimately makes the most progress.

This is not to say that I want to spend my time back home being inert and to live a life of quiet reflection.  That’s clearly not for me.  But, I have found that as a result of this last month that I’m far more in touch with myself than I’ve been in years.  I want to hold on to at least a part of that.

And, I want to do this again.