Everyone has dreams. To be human is to want, to aspire, to pursue that which will make the world a better place for us and our kin. In this post I explore our dreams, and why we can’t afford to stop chasing them.
An Ocean Night
After the last sliver of solar fire disappears, the colors of the sunset gradually drain away into the darkening west. As the curtain of night draws across the sky, suddenly a pin-prick of light appears where before there was just fading twilight. Soon it is joined by others, as the brighter constellations crystallize into their familiar forms. Orion’s usually the first one I spot. The last streaks of dusk dwindle into total blackness, and the sky seems to explode with light flooding down from the thousands of stars too dim to penetrate anything but the purest night. Within the glowing tableau, a thick ribbon weaves its way through the scene, as plainly visible as if it was painted by the stroke of a brush: the Milky Way.
The more luminous stars offer a show all of their own, twinkling away in chaotic patterns, flashing blues and reds so vivid they sometimes resemble a police siren. If you watch for just a few minutes, you’ll probably catch a meteor burning its path through the upper atmosphere. Every now and then an especially big and bright one flashes like a lightning strike, leaving a shimmering trail whose after-image lingers just long enough to make you wonder whether you imagined it. And then, as the night wears on into early morning, a waning half moon rises over the horizon, its pale gleam playing off the water’s surface in a manner irresistibly suggestive of magic.
The night sky seen from a small boat at sea is one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve thus far encountered in my time on this world. Looking upon it fills me with awe, respect, and wonder. But there is a deeper and more primal response, as well: a longing to understand that wonder, to pursue it, to master it. To resort to proverb, I find myself drawn to dream of reaching for the stars.
Evolution’s Greatest Gift
What makes the celestial scene such an interesting reflection of our racial consciousness is that, unlike most of our natural environment, humans have experienced it in almost exactly the same way in every region of the world for millions of years. Today’s shooting stars are no different than those the hunter-gatherers of our pre-historic past gazed upon. And indeed, insofar as they were biologically our equals, they shared the same innate fears and desires. It seems reasonable to imagine that they, too, felt the psychological allure of the heavens.
However, it is clearly folly to claim that nothing has changed over the last ten millennia. While our biology is the same, our culture and philosophy are radically different. Where many early civilizations worshipped these “heavens” as the home of the gods, our modern world tends to treat them with casual disregard. Aside from a small community of astronomers and enthusiasts, most people rarely notice the nightly spectacle anymore. This can hardly be because our scientific discoveries made it uninteresting: even a basic understanding of what’s really going on in our solar system, galaxy, and Universe forms a richer and more wondrous story than any ancient legend.
No, the night sky is no less amazing now than it was 10,000 years ago. But we humans are intricate and complicated machines, and understanding who and what we are is not so simple as a single desire. There are other prototypical traits which come into play, and I think the culprit in this case is our wonderfully short attention span. The corollary to always chasing a dream is that once it has been reached, once a problem is deemed solved, we are genetically engineered to shed our desire for further pursuit. Hence, once we understood the stars, most of us moved on to other things.
Still, taken together, these psychological predispositions form a clever and powerful force, whose influence on human nature is unmistakable. Add to them the emotion of boredom, and you get a formula for a species that is always restless, compelled to pour all energy not necessary for survival into relentless self-improvement. This brilliant device may form evolution’s greatest gift to our species, and it has pulled us inexorably to where we stand today.
And that brings us to a central question: where do we stand today? Surely, there is much for humanity to be proud of. Our understanding of our world and ourselves has reached phenomenal heights. Our ability to communicate with each other and, in a very real sense, exist as a single human society, has already emerged as a defining quality of the 21st century. Yet at the same time we face a broader array of existential challenges than ever before in our history. Somehow our ability to generate problems has begun to outpace our ability to solve them. In short, we seem to be gradually losing the edge that evolution has thus far bestowed upon us. And I believe that if we are to pass through the eye of the needle we presently face, it is essential that we rediscover that edge, and fast.
If biology is our ally in this cause, then culture is surely our enemy. The ideas, tendencies, and beliefs of a people are powerful forces that are every bit as capable of shaping the course of history as are our genes themselves. In our modern world, it seems to me that a number of ideas have been steadily chipping away at the monolith of evolutionary human ambition. I imagine sociologists could write volumes exploring such a claim, but for my purposes, it suffices to cite a few trends that are exemplary of the overarching theme.
Why Society is Stagnating
Undoubtedly, we are to some extent victims of our own success. The past several centuries have seen technological, cultural, and social progress that is nothing short of staggering. The cutting edge in almost every field of human inquiry has been pushed so far that, in most cases, many years of dedicated study are required even to push the envelope. I think this tends to effect a sense of powerlessness, a feeling that the challenges are “too big” for most of us to have any real impact. Along with this comes a willingness to accept only modest goals for ourselves, often barely more than our own immediate subsistence and happiness.
A related sensation is one of being lost amongst a vast sea of fellow humans, and consequently of one’s own impact on the world being diminished. When our visible world was just the people, places, and things around us, confined to a manageable geographic region, we could clearly see and feel our own significance. But the communications explosion of the 20th century has increased our awareness of just how much happens that is completely beyond our reach. Ironically this abasing feeling is exaggerated even further by our ongoing cosmological revelations of scope. Not only are we small people in a big world, but that world is a tiny dot on a tiny dot in the vastness of existence. We are left to wonder how we can hope to make a difference in the face of such proportions.
Perhaps the most troubling inhibitor of our hereditary ambition is our growing contentment. The tremendous progress made by our species has finally reaped the benefit that a large percentage of people can more or less live easily (in a relative historical sense). This is obviously not a bad thing in and of itself; quite the opposite. But contentment lays a fertile breeding ground for complacency, for it allows us to say, “This is good enough.” Never before in history have so many people been so willing to accept the status quo.
However, what really worries me is something more sinister and more powerful than mere complacency: fear of failure. It is a self-evident fact that all great feats of progress were achieved by men and women who were willing to take a risk. Without that courage, none of us would be here today. Yet as we grow complacent, we become afraid that rocking the boat might rob us of the illusion of stability we’ve braced ourselves upon. “Prudence” becomes the easy justification for timidity. This logic is confining and suffocating. All the tyrants of the world could not crush so many hopes, forbid so many dreams, as this single idea.
Refusing to Settle for Mediocrity
Every one of the afore-mentioned beliefs is based upon a fallacy, and we have let them hold sway over us for too long. Why should we fear failure? We are the legacy of one of the greatest success stories the Universe has ever seen. Time and again history has shown that people are capable of the incredible, if only we demand it of ourselves. In fact, the greatest limit on what we achieve is nearly always what we believe we are capable of achieving: how high we set our sights. Once you’ve decided what you want, and you know deep down that you can get there, everything else is just logistics.
This mantra applies at least as much to societies as it does to individuals. One of humanity’s most remarkable strengths is our ability to work together, cooperatively achieving that which is beyond one lone man or woman. If all the problems within a single person’s reach are already solved, then we should rejoice at the opportunity to stand upon that platform and as a group launch ourselves to even grander stages. Similarly, the idea that I cannot contribute simply because I’m only a small piece of the whole is preposterous. Rather than letting the scale of our modern world intimidate us into inaction, it should excite us at our stunning collective potential. My pride in playing my part in realizing a fantastic dream should not be diminished merely because the credit is shared with my peers.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve gradually transformed from a cynic to an unapologetic idealist. My idealism is not a belief that making the world a perfect place is easy or automatic. It is the belief that through the combined power of the human spirit, a far better world is possible. I see a world where, working together and believing in each other, a critical mass of humanity can advance our state by leaps and bounds. This may seem altruistic, but in fact it is shamelessly selfish: in such a world, there can be no doubt that every single one of us would be immeasurably better off than we are today.
Once one has been tantalized by a vision of this imagined place, doing anything but sprinting towards it with all your might seems unimaginable. Complacency and fear can be swept aside, replaced by naked longing for the far shore. In fact, I find my life now dictated by a new fear: the fear of underachieving, of not aiming high enough.
So how do we get there? It’s a long journey, and far beyond the scope of this post to describe the path. But as with every journey, the first step is and must always be to believe in ourselves. Every dream we abandon, every flame of passion we let wither and be extinguished, we fall one step further away from where we must go. If we aren’t fighting tooth and nail for excellence, we are sliding into mediocrity.
And towards that end, I invite anyone and everyone to join me in the following promise to each other: Each success shall propel us forward to greater challenges; each failure shall strengthen our resolve; and we will always dream big, and never stop reaching for the stars.
Let’s dream together!
Kevin
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Cross-post: "Reflections, San Francisco to Hawaii"
Isolation tends to act as a lens on your own character, so over the 25 days it took us to make this passage I got a pretty good view of myself. Analyzing my emotional responses to the situations in which I was placed was particularly intriguing. I had to confront the disconcerting reality of how irrational and capricious my own emotions can be; on the other hand, I realized that with a little intentionality and willpower they can be subdued and even harnessed constructively. So I made mastering this art a major focus of the trip to Hawaii, and while the effort is certainly ongoing, I took away some good lessons.
As with the initial segment of the voyage, this sophomoric venture started off with some adversity. We used up just about all of our discretionary fuel in the first couple days, barely making it two hundred miles offshore. Then we spent another infuriating day or two sitting stationary on the glassy water. I wrote in detail in the Ship’s Log about the frustration of being becalmed, so I won’t belabor the point here. The sense of powerlessness it engenders, though, can be almost overwhelming. This is particularly true for someone with my goal-oriented disposition, for whom the constant recalculations of “At an average speed of 1.3 knots, and 2034 miles to go, we’ll get there in…” become cripplingly depressing rather quickly.
This is a type of emotional trap to which I seem particularly prone: Things are going badly, therefore they will continue to go badly no matter what, so I should just sit here and sulk. There is an escape from this trap, though, which I picked up on largely by watching Ted (who’s much better at handling this situation than I am). The trick is simple: be proactive. Even if there’s nothing you can do to solve the primary problem(s) at hand, there’s always some constructive goal to be found, and it’s amazing how making orthogonal progress elsewhere empowers you to be optimistic.
The nature of negative emotions is that they form a feedback loop, spiraling downward into lower and lower spirits. Getting up and doing something is, first and foremost, a way to break the cycle, and to take your mind off the frustration. On more than one occasion when I was just about ready to vent my rage on our deck with a hammer, picking up some small task on the boat provided an outlet for that energy, and somehow after I finished I felt much better. I can’t claim that I’ve perfected this technique, and I still find myself getting riled up once in a while, but having diffusion mechanisms in my back pocket helps me keep a much more serene disposition.
At some points in your life, though, things genuinely are going badly, and serene dispositions only get you so far. The storm that hit us on the fifth day fit this category: going from becalmed to a 35 knot gale blowing straight out of your desired heading is, in an almost literal sense, adding insult to injury. In these situations, the issue is no longer how to keep yourself from making the situation seem worse than it is. Even a realistic appraisal of the situation tells you that, when all is said and done, you’re probably not going to look back on this fondly. Now, the challenge becomes motivating yourself to push through.
It was while soul-searching for this motivation that I came up with the “I Surrender” button. In essence, this thought experiment is about reminding yourself of the other side of the coin. Whenever we make any choice or decision in life, we know and accept that there will be cons as well as pros. At the instant we make the choice, we judge the latter to outweigh the former, and thereby we implicitly accept that we’ll live with the cons if and when they happen. In the “I Surrender” experiment, you look yourself in the eyes and ask whether you still believe your judgment was correct. If not, then go ahead and metaphorically push the button, accept that you made a mistake, and figure out how to move on. But if you still think the upside is worth it, then quit whining and deal with the downside, just as you promised yourself you would.
For me, this experiment is a simple choice. When I actually force myself to remember all the reasons I’m doing this, giving it up just because I’m a little uncomfortable seems unthinkable, even silly. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, I’m not doing this because it’s easy; I’m doing it because it’s hard.
The other critical thing to remember about tough times is that, like everything else, they’re transient. The storm blew through, and gradually the winds subsided, then ever-so-slowly turned north and then east. Eventually we crawled our way under the 30th parallel and into the trades, and had two weeks of near-perfect sailing. We even made it to Hawaii only a few days behind our expected pace, and without any major damage to ship or crew. By objective measures it was a fairly successful trip, despite the bleak outlook after the first week. The lesson: there is no causal relationship between attitude and reality. Once you’ve accepted this fact, you might as well just pick a positive attitude and let reality do its thing.
So far these thoughts have centered on dealing with a negative attitude, but equally important (and often overlooked) is fully appreciating when things are going well. For someone like me, who is always looking at the horizon, there is a real danger of letting life’s greatest moments slip by unnoticed. Imagine a master chef who, upon perfecting his ultimate dish, is so absorbed in his achievement that he forgets to eat it. Just as letting your attitude turn a bad situation worse is foolish, letting it render a wondrous one blasé is truly tragic.
To this point, I remember one afternoon in particular, sitting up on the foredeck and watching the sun melt sensuously into the horizon. It occurred to me that, for all the planning and logistics of the trip, and all the stress of keeping the voyage on track, I hadn’t been letting myself appreciate how sublime many aspects of the experience really were. I decided to spend the rest of the evening with my head clear, not worrying about anything, letting the beauty of the scene and the sense of freedom wash over me like waves. It was, in many respects, a cathartic moment for me. Since then, one of my highest priorities has been not to miss any opportunity to revel in the joy of a splendid moment.
There is a fine line, however, between enjoying yourself and becoming complacent. “Things are going pretty well” should not be an excuse to avoid experimenting with how they could be better; this is a particular Achilles’ heel of mine. During the weeks of good sailing in the trades, Ted would often suggest tweaks to our sails or rigging, and my initial reaction was always “Why bother, we’re making good time now; if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Fortunately Ted is way too stubborn to give in to this logic, and we usually ended up trying his ideas. From these experiments we discovered (among other things) the jib-and-jigger rig (running downwind with just a jib and mizzen), with which we now sail almost exclusively. It’s undeniable that, by looking for ways to improve even when things were going well, we’ve made ourselves better sailors and made the trip smoother. I’ll be the first to admit that overcoming inertial laziness is hard, but I’ve found that if I at least rationally acknowledge that it’s worth it, gathering up the motivation is that much easier.
All of these various psychological insights, upon inspection, seem to have a common theme to them. As I’ve reflected on them all, I’ve felt this theme emerging, but it took me some time to find the right metaphor to express it. It was only natural given my proclivities that I found one I liked in the world of video games: namely, the Vertical Shooter. In this genre of game, the player typically controls a fighter plane (or a helicopter, or a spaceship, whatever) that’s flying over the ground below. The defining characteristic of vertical shooters is that, regardless of the player’s actions, the ground continually scrolls by beneath them. The player can move around within the confines of the screen, shoot enemies, get power-ups, etc., but whatever they do the ground keeps scrolling. And so my thesis is this: life is a vertical shooter.
No matter what our actions, thoughts, or feelings, life comes at us at a staggeringly consistent pace of one second per second. The best strategy in such a game is to live in the present, always making the best of the here and now. Life’s too short to play it any other way.
As with the initial segment of the voyage, this sophomoric venture started off with some adversity. We used up just about all of our discretionary fuel in the first couple days, barely making it two hundred miles offshore. Then we spent another infuriating day or two sitting stationary on the glassy water. I wrote in detail in the Ship’s Log about the frustration of being becalmed, so I won’t belabor the point here. The sense of powerlessness it engenders, though, can be almost overwhelming. This is particularly true for someone with my goal-oriented disposition, for whom the constant recalculations of “At an average speed of 1.3 knots, and 2034 miles to go, we’ll get there in…” become cripplingly depressing rather quickly.
This is a type of emotional trap to which I seem particularly prone: Things are going badly, therefore they will continue to go badly no matter what, so I should just sit here and sulk. There is an escape from this trap, though, which I picked up on largely by watching Ted (who’s much better at handling this situation than I am). The trick is simple: be proactive. Even if there’s nothing you can do to solve the primary problem(s) at hand, there’s always some constructive goal to be found, and it’s amazing how making orthogonal progress elsewhere empowers you to be optimistic.
The nature of negative emotions is that they form a feedback loop, spiraling downward into lower and lower spirits. Getting up and doing something is, first and foremost, a way to break the cycle, and to take your mind off the frustration. On more than one occasion when I was just about ready to vent my rage on our deck with a hammer, picking up some small task on the boat provided an outlet for that energy, and somehow after I finished I felt much better. I can’t claim that I’ve perfected this technique, and I still find myself getting riled up once in a while, but having diffusion mechanisms in my back pocket helps me keep a much more serene disposition.
At some points in your life, though, things genuinely are going badly, and serene dispositions only get you so far. The storm that hit us on the fifth day fit this category: going from becalmed to a 35 knot gale blowing straight out of your desired heading is, in an almost literal sense, adding insult to injury. In these situations, the issue is no longer how to keep yourself from making the situation seem worse than it is. Even a realistic appraisal of the situation tells you that, when all is said and done, you’re probably not going to look back on this fondly. Now, the challenge becomes motivating yourself to push through.
It was while soul-searching for this motivation that I came up with the “I Surrender” button. In essence, this thought experiment is about reminding yourself of the other side of the coin. Whenever we make any choice or decision in life, we know and accept that there will be cons as well as pros. At the instant we make the choice, we judge the latter to outweigh the former, and thereby we implicitly accept that we’ll live with the cons if and when they happen. In the “I Surrender” experiment, you look yourself in the eyes and ask whether you still believe your judgment was correct. If not, then go ahead and metaphorically push the button, accept that you made a mistake, and figure out how to move on. But if you still think the upside is worth it, then quit whining and deal with the downside, just as you promised yourself you would.
For me, this experiment is a simple choice. When I actually force myself to remember all the reasons I’m doing this, giving it up just because I’m a little uncomfortable seems unthinkable, even silly. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, I’m not doing this because it’s easy; I’m doing it because it’s hard.
The other critical thing to remember about tough times is that, like everything else, they’re transient. The storm blew through, and gradually the winds subsided, then ever-so-slowly turned north and then east. Eventually we crawled our way under the 30th parallel and into the trades, and had two weeks of near-perfect sailing. We even made it to Hawaii only a few days behind our expected pace, and without any major damage to ship or crew. By objective measures it was a fairly successful trip, despite the bleak outlook after the first week. The lesson: there is no causal relationship between attitude and reality. Once you’ve accepted this fact, you might as well just pick a positive attitude and let reality do its thing.
So far these thoughts have centered on dealing with a negative attitude, but equally important (and often overlooked) is fully appreciating when things are going well. For someone like me, who is always looking at the horizon, there is a real danger of letting life’s greatest moments slip by unnoticed. Imagine a master chef who, upon perfecting his ultimate dish, is so absorbed in his achievement that he forgets to eat it. Just as letting your attitude turn a bad situation worse is foolish, letting it render a wondrous one blasé is truly tragic.
To this point, I remember one afternoon in particular, sitting up on the foredeck and watching the sun melt sensuously into the horizon. It occurred to me that, for all the planning and logistics of the trip, and all the stress of keeping the voyage on track, I hadn’t been letting myself appreciate how sublime many aspects of the experience really were. I decided to spend the rest of the evening with my head clear, not worrying about anything, letting the beauty of the scene and the sense of freedom wash over me like waves. It was, in many respects, a cathartic moment for me. Since then, one of my highest priorities has been not to miss any opportunity to revel in the joy of a splendid moment.
There is a fine line, however, between enjoying yourself and becoming complacent. “Things are going pretty well” should not be an excuse to avoid experimenting with how they could be better; this is a particular Achilles’ heel of mine. During the weeks of good sailing in the trades, Ted would often suggest tweaks to our sails or rigging, and my initial reaction was always “Why bother, we’re making good time now; if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Fortunately Ted is way too stubborn to give in to this logic, and we usually ended up trying his ideas. From these experiments we discovered (among other things) the jib-and-jigger rig (running downwind with just a jib and mizzen), with which we now sail almost exclusively. It’s undeniable that, by looking for ways to improve even when things were going well, we’ve made ourselves better sailors and made the trip smoother. I’ll be the first to admit that overcoming inertial laziness is hard, but I’ve found that if I at least rationally acknowledge that it’s worth it, gathering up the motivation is that much easier.
All of these various psychological insights, upon inspection, seem to have a common theme to them. As I’ve reflected on them all, I’ve felt this theme emerging, but it took me some time to find the right metaphor to express it. It was only natural given my proclivities that I found one I liked in the world of video games: namely, the Vertical Shooter. In this genre of game, the player typically controls a fighter plane (or a helicopter, or a spaceship, whatever) that’s flying over the ground below. The defining characteristic of vertical shooters is that, regardless of the player’s actions, the ground continually scrolls by beneath them. The player can move around within the confines of the screen, shoot enemies, get power-ups, etc., but whatever they do the ground keeps scrolling. And so my thesis is this: life is a vertical shooter.
No matter what our actions, thoughts, or feelings, life comes at us at a staggeringly consistent pace of one second per second. The best strategy in such a game is to live in the present, always making the best of the here and now. Life’s too short to play it any other way.
Cross-post: "Reflections, Seattle to San Francisco"
Looking back, our first venture into the open ocean was exactly what we needed. It scared us just enough to give us a healthy respect for what we were getting into. It challenged us just enough to force us to learn and advance our skills. It provided adversities, but we were able to overcome them, giving us confidence in our ability to adapt and overcome. The mix of negative experiences, to set our expectations realistically, with positive ones to keep us from outright giving up, was just right. I couldn't have asked for a better introduction to offshore cruising.
That said, there were some distinct moments during the voyage where that was decidedly not my sentiment. I vividly remember one night in particular, hunched into myself against the cold and wind, physically and mentally exhausted from dealing with various crises, when I wondered "Was this all a mistake? Was everyone right when they told me I was crazy? Are we going to have to give up on this dream before it even really starts?" I won't sugar-coat it: that was a bleak moment in my life, and not one I enjoy looking back on. When you hit bottom like that, though, it's worth taking a moment to understand how you got there, and how you climbed back out.
The trip had started off well enough with an uneventful motor-powered ride out the Puget Sound (we hadn't had any real wind to speak of). After a final pit-stop in Neah Bay (beautiful by the way) we'd set a course due west to get our prescribed 50 mile distance from the coast before turning south. Almost immediately after clearing Cape Flattery, things had gradually started to go downhill.
From all the preparatory research and investigation I'd gone through, I'd learned to be worried about seasickness, so it was not entirely a surprise that two of the three of us got hit by it. Still, it's one thing to be intellectually expecting it, quite another to be feeling it. Mine was not really all that bad, just a mild queasiness, but it was enough to make moving around or concentrating on anything pretty unpleasant. Aaron, on the other hand, was rapidly confined to a bunk down below, from whence he could not move (more or less literally) for at least 36 hours. This left Ted and I to deal with the boat by ourselves.
The severity of the seasickness problem was exacerbated by the fact that right off the bat we hit some fairly rough weather. At least, it was significantly rougher than anything Ted or I had sailed in to that point, and so we got a crash course in dealing with 20+ knot winds. That first night was an eye-opener, and cleanly eradicated any lingering delusions that the entire voyage was going to be easy and relaxing.
It was when things started going seriously wrong, though, that my attitude went from discomfort to concern (panic loomed menacingly, but thankfully it never quite got that bad). First we found that we had torn the genoa. Then the SSB radio stopped working. We were fighting an unfriendly south wind, and making slow progress, with Aaron still barely functional. Then in one night we re-tore the genoa (which we'd tried to tape up), and lost the engine (it turned out to be the v-drive but we didn't diagnose that right away). Suddenly it seemed like everything was breaking all at once.
It was at that point that I had my moment of doubt. Looking back, the situation wasn't actually that dire, in and of itself. Reflecting on it, I think my perception of our circumstances was skewed by what I've taken to calling the "positive problem jerk." In physics, jerk is the derivative of acceleration, i.e. the rate at which acceleration is increasing. A positive problem jerk is my (admittedly nerdy) way of describing what seems like a genuine psychological and emotional phenomenon: suddenly, it feels like you're approaching a "problem event horizon" past which everything will surely fail catastrophically.
If I were to pause here and try to draw a lesson from that experience, it would be to be wary of attributing too much significance to positive problem jerk. Sometimes, stuff just goes wrong, and in any random distribution of events clusters will naturally form. Try to keep an objective view: just because a number of things have gone wrong close together doesn't (necessarily) indicate any reason to believe anything else will. Keeping a cool head and an optimistic outlook will allow you to "weather the storm," be it literally or metaphorically, and turn the corner to start addressing the problems and overcoming them.
In our case, this meant recognizing that none of the problems were insurmountable. The boat was still floating, we still had (some) sails, we were in no immediate danger and could continue heading south. Gradually the weather eased, the wind became favorable, and Aaron got over his seasickness. The loss of the SSB was frustrating, particularly because we didn't know what was wrong, but our VHF was fine and this allowed us access to NOAA weather forecasts. Our engine couldn't be used for propulsion, but could be run to recharge batteries, so really things weren't that bad at all.
Another little lesson, by the way, about psychology: darkness/night make everything seem worse, and daytime/sunshine make everything better. I noticed this phenomenon repeatedly over the course of the trip. Whenever we hit a snag or a problem during the night, in the dark, somehow it seemed much more serious, more urgent. As soon as the sun came up, it didn't seem like a big deal. After the storm passed and we hit a few bright sunny days, this effect doubled. Suddenly, sitting out in the bright sun, all of our moods went from morose to cheerful. The practical upshot of this observation is perhaps obvious, but worth stating all the same: if you're feeling really down and out, get some sunshine, and everything will be OK.
So during these sunny, cheery days, we got some time to catch our breath a bit and reflect on our status. It was during this period that we had our first meaningful group communications exercise, the subject of which was what circumstances constituted cause for requesting help (e.g. from the Coast Guard). The details of the conversation aren't all that relevant, but it's worth stepping back a bit and seeing a larger issue.
People often talk about the importance of good communication in the success of a team. It can be hard to really appreciate this when the topics of communication are mundane or trivial, which is why I found our conversation at this juncture noteworthy. When your life is (literally) at stake, being crystal clear on everyone's expectations becomes a lot more meaningful. You realize that there is a difference between (a) Expressing your views, listening to others', and then getting lunch, versus (b) Achieving a true consensus. In our case, it took some time and patience to work through, but in the end I think we arrived at a middle-ground we all liked, with a greater understanding of both what each of us wanted as well as why.
Those few days of nice weather, in combination with the weather forecasts our VHF radio provided, gave us an opportunity to actually prepare ourselves for the second storm. It was good to get this chance because our shaky experience through the first one hadn't done much for our self-confidence, and we needed to prove to ourselves that we could handle it. We spent a full afternoon just walking through what we would do, getting lines and sails ready, and getting ourselves rested up.
When the heavy weather came, the difference from the first storm was night and day. We never got overwhelmed, never had any problems to speak of, and made fantastic time surfing in front of a perfect wind. (By the way, surfing down 15 foot waves in a 36 foot sailboat is great fun, and somehow deeply satisfying.) If there's insight to be gained here, it's probably just reinforcement of the age-old adage to learn from your mistakes. If you get beaten up over something that you know you have to overcome, the best way to respond is to analyze what went wrong, figure out how to improve, and get right back out and try it again.
Incidentally, the few days of calm/sunny weather juxtaposed with the couple days of heavy wind illuminated an interesting irony of open-ocean sailing. The weather that is beautiful and calm and sunny and warm, by and large sucks for sailing because you don't have enough wind to go at a half-decent speed. Conversely, when the wind is howling and the seas are rolling and you're tired of getting batted around by waves, the fact that you fly at 6+ knots kind of makes up for it. There's probably an allegory for life in there somewhere, but I don't get paid enough to try and draw it out (or, for that matter, at all).
As we got closer and closer to shore, the great winds the storm had brought dwindled to a breeze, then a whisper, and as we finally caught sight of land they died altogether. This was perhaps the most frustrating experience of the journey. To be a mere 30 miles from our destination and yet not be able to move at all was infuriating. It also made the loss of our engine all the more painful. We had known we were going to probably need a tow to get into a marina, but we'd been hoping to at least make it under the Golden Gate Bridge under our own power. Sadly, with Aaron's scheduling constraints looming, this wasn't possible.
Still, finishing is finishing, and looking back I'm pretty proud of the accomplishment. We knew going in that we were novices and that we were going to have to learn on the job. We knew that we'd probably make mistakes, and that we'd probably uncover problems in our equipment and gaps in our knowledge. Our only hope was that none of these proved disastrous, and that we could handle them and make it to San Francisco bolstered by a great deal more experience, knowledge, and confidence. In that regard, as I said, I think the trip was a huge success.
On a broader scale, we had to realistically consider the Seattle-to-San Francisco leg as really just a practice, a warm-up for the rest of our planned voyage. Looming ahead of us was the 2200-nautical-mile trek to Hawaii, the longest individual segment of our entire itinerary. Framed in that context, we really needed the warm-up to push our limits as far as they could go. In a way, we were lucky that we were so unlucky.
Which brings me to my final insight, an admittedly semi-masochistic one but valid just the same: learn to be grateful for your misfortunes. Every adversity is a chance to learn, grow, and become stronger. If you find yourself giving in to frustration and defeatism, just think about the challenge down the road that you'll be ready for thanks to this opportunity. Smile to yourself, knowing that even as you stumble you are building the tools to achieve your dreams.
That said, there were some distinct moments during the voyage where that was decidedly not my sentiment. I vividly remember one night in particular, hunched into myself against the cold and wind, physically and mentally exhausted from dealing with various crises, when I wondered "Was this all a mistake? Was everyone right when they told me I was crazy? Are we going to have to give up on this dream before it even really starts?" I won't sugar-coat it: that was a bleak moment in my life, and not one I enjoy looking back on. When you hit bottom like that, though, it's worth taking a moment to understand how you got there, and how you climbed back out.
The trip had started off well enough with an uneventful motor-powered ride out the Puget Sound (we hadn't had any real wind to speak of). After a final pit-stop in Neah Bay (beautiful by the way) we'd set a course due west to get our prescribed 50 mile distance from the coast before turning south. Almost immediately after clearing Cape Flattery, things had gradually started to go downhill.
From all the preparatory research and investigation I'd gone through, I'd learned to be worried about seasickness, so it was not entirely a surprise that two of the three of us got hit by it. Still, it's one thing to be intellectually expecting it, quite another to be feeling it. Mine was not really all that bad, just a mild queasiness, but it was enough to make moving around or concentrating on anything pretty unpleasant. Aaron, on the other hand, was rapidly confined to a bunk down below, from whence he could not move (more or less literally) for at least 36 hours. This left Ted and I to deal with the boat by ourselves.
The severity of the seasickness problem was exacerbated by the fact that right off the bat we hit some fairly rough weather. At least, it was significantly rougher than anything Ted or I had sailed in to that point, and so we got a crash course in dealing with 20+ knot winds. That first night was an eye-opener, and cleanly eradicated any lingering delusions that the entire voyage was going to be easy and relaxing.
It was when things started going seriously wrong, though, that my attitude went from discomfort to concern (panic loomed menacingly, but thankfully it never quite got that bad). First we found that we had torn the genoa. Then the SSB radio stopped working. We were fighting an unfriendly south wind, and making slow progress, with Aaron still barely functional. Then in one night we re-tore the genoa (which we'd tried to tape up), and lost the engine (it turned out to be the v-drive but we didn't diagnose that right away). Suddenly it seemed like everything was breaking all at once.
It was at that point that I had my moment of doubt. Looking back, the situation wasn't actually that dire, in and of itself. Reflecting on it, I think my perception of our circumstances was skewed by what I've taken to calling the "positive problem jerk." In physics, jerk is the derivative of acceleration, i.e. the rate at which acceleration is increasing. A positive problem jerk is my (admittedly nerdy) way of describing what seems like a genuine psychological and emotional phenomenon: suddenly, it feels like you're approaching a "problem event horizon" past which everything will surely fail catastrophically.
If I were to pause here and try to draw a lesson from that experience, it would be to be wary of attributing too much significance to positive problem jerk. Sometimes, stuff just goes wrong, and in any random distribution of events clusters will naturally form. Try to keep an objective view: just because a number of things have gone wrong close together doesn't (necessarily) indicate any reason to believe anything else will. Keeping a cool head and an optimistic outlook will allow you to "weather the storm," be it literally or metaphorically, and turn the corner to start addressing the problems and overcoming them.
In our case, this meant recognizing that none of the problems were insurmountable. The boat was still floating, we still had (some) sails, we were in no immediate danger and could continue heading south. Gradually the weather eased, the wind became favorable, and Aaron got over his seasickness. The loss of the SSB was frustrating, particularly because we didn't know what was wrong, but our VHF was fine and this allowed us access to NOAA weather forecasts. Our engine couldn't be used for propulsion, but could be run to recharge batteries, so really things weren't that bad at all.
Another little lesson, by the way, about psychology: darkness/night make everything seem worse, and daytime/sunshine make everything better. I noticed this phenomenon repeatedly over the course of the trip. Whenever we hit a snag or a problem during the night, in the dark, somehow it seemed much more serious, more urgent. As soon as the sun came up, it didn't seem like a big deal. After the storm passed and we hit a few bright sunny days, this effect doubled. Suddenly, sitting out in the bright sun, all of our moods went from morose to cheerful. The practical upshot of this observation is perhaps obvious, but worth stating all the same: if you're feeling really down and out, get some sunshine, and everything will be OK.
So during these sunny, cheery days, we got some time to catch our breath a bit and reflect on our status. It was during this period that we had our first meaningful group communications exercise, the subject of which was what circumstances constituted cause for requesting help (e.g. from the Coast Guard). The details of the conversation aren't all that relevant, but it's worth stepping back a bit and seeing a larger issue.
People often talk about the importance of good communication in the success of a team. It can be hard to really appreciate this when the topics of communication are mundane or trivial, which is why I found our conversation at this juncture noteworthy. When your life is (literally) at stake, being crystal clear on everyone's expectations becomes a lot more meaningful. You realize that there is a difference between (a) Expressing your views, listening to others', and then getting lunch, versus (b) Achieving a true consensus. In our case, it took some time and patience to work through, but in the end I think we arrived at a middle-ground we all liked, with a greater understanding of both what each of us wanted as well as why.
Those few days of nice weather, in combination with the weather forecasts our VHF radio provided, gave us an opportunity to actually prepare ourselves for the second storm. It was good to get this chance because our shaky experience through the first one hadn't done much for our self-confidence, and we needed to prove to ourselves that we could handle it. We spent a full afternoon just walking through what we would do, getting lines and sails ready, and getting ourselves rested up.
When the heavy weather came, the difference from the first storm was night and day. We never got overwhelmed, never had any problems to speak of, and made fantastic time surfing in front of a perfect wind. (By the way, surfing down 15 foot waves in a 36 foot sailboat is great fun, and somehow deeply satisfying.) If there's insight to be gained here, it's probably just reinforcement of the age-old adage to learn from your mistakes. If you get beaten up over something that you know you have to overcome, the best way to respond is to analyze what went wrong, figure out how to improve, and get right back out and try it again.
Incidentally, the few days of calm/sunny weather juxtaposed with the couple days of heavy wind illuminated an interesting irony of open-ocean sailing. The weather that is beautiful and calm and sunny and warm, by and large sucks for sailing because you don't have enough wind to go at a half-decent speed. Conversely, when the wind is howling and the seas are rolling and you're tired of getting batted around by waves, the fact that you fly at 6+ knots kind of makes up for it. There's probably an allegory for life in there somewhere, but I don't get paid enough to try and draw it out (or, for that matter, at all).
As we got closer and closer to shore, the great winds the storm had brought dwindled to a breeze, then a whisper, and as we finally caught sight of land they died altogether. This was perhaps the most frustrating experience of the journey. To be a mere 30 miles from our destination and yet not be able to move at all was infuriating. It also made the loss of our engine all the more painful. We had known we were going to probably need a tow to get into a marina, but we'd been hoping to at least make it under the Golden Gate Bridge under our own power. Sadly, with Aaron's scheduling constraints looming, this wasn't possible.
Still, finishing is finishing, and looking back I'm pretty proud of the accomplishment. We knew going in that we were novices and that we were going to have to learn on the job. We knew that we'd probably make mistakes, and that we'd probably uncover problems in our equipment and gaps in our knowledge. Our only hope was that none of these proved disastrous, and that we could handle them and make it to San Francisco bolstered by a great deal more experience, knowledge, and confidence. In that regard, as I said, I think the trip was a huge success.
On a broader scale, we had to realistically consider the Seattle-to-San Francisco leg as really just a practice, a warm-up for the rest of our planned voyage. Looming ahead of us was the 2200-nautical-mile trek to Hawaii, the longest individual segment of our entire itinerary. Framed in that context, we really needed the warm-up to push our limits as far as they could go. In a way, we were lucky that we were so unlucky.
Which brings me to my final insight, an admittedly semi-masochistic one but valid just the same: learn to be grateful for your misfortunes. Every adversity is a chance to learn, grow, and become stronger. If you find yourself giving in to frustration and defeatism, just think about the challenge down the road that you'll be ready for thanks to this opportunity. Smile to yourself, knowing that even as you stumble you are building the tools to achieve your dreams.
Cross-post: "Why I'm Writing This"
As I've been sailing across the Pacific, I've been writing in two separate formats. One has been as a journal, detailing daily events and some of my thoughts along the way. The other started as a more contemplative look at the lessons I was learning from the experience; it has morphed over time into this blog. To keep the continuity of the writing, I'm cross-posting the original "Reflections" here, starting with this introduction explaining my motivations.
===
Kallisti Reflections - "Why I'm Writing This"
As anyone who's met me probably knows all too well, I'm obsessively introspective. Understanding myself and how I interact with my world are foundational to everything I do. Continual self-improvement and growth are to me a way of life, if not an addiction. This trait is largely responsible for my having embarked on a year-long sailing expedition around the world, and is also the reason I've invested so much time and energy in writing about it.
The experience itself provides many fantastic opportunities to learn. For starters, going from zero knowledge about sailing (or boating of any kind) to world-cruising-ready in nine months was an intense auto-pedagogical experiment. I learned at least as much about how to learn, and how I in particular learn, as I did about the direct subject matter. Beyond that, the many intellectual, emotional, and logistical challenges associated with such an undertaking have shed light on aspects of my psyche that are rarely unearthed in my "normal" life.
But in order to take true advantage of this adventure, I need to do more than just survive it. I need to take the time to reflect on all the various ups and downs, the trials and tribulations, and peel away the details to unveil such lasting wisdoms as I can discern. By so doing, I can hopefully justify to myself all the time, money, and physical and spiritual energy I've invested, and perhaps even earn a solid return. I set out to make myself a deeper, richer, more balanced and versatile person, and can only hope to achieve such a goal by paying attention to the lessons life gives me.
Accordingly, these reflections are my attempts to look back on the events of the trip, one leg at a time, and tease out the most useful insights, the most memorable realizations. Forcing myself to condense vague concepts and sleepy epiphanies into detailed prose is a means of both crystallizing them into coherent thought, and cataloguing them for my own future reference.
A side effect of this mechanism is the output of a series of essays describing, in part, my world view and how it has evolved as the trip proceeds. Some people may even find these interesting enough to be worth reading, and if so, I'm thrilled to have provided some value to others. However, I make no promises that the contents are worthwhile or enlightening to anyone besides me. So if you're inclined to read on, then please don't take anything that follows prescriptively. Where the imperative is used, it's directed at myself; you're welcome to shop around, try things on, and keep whatever fits.
===
Kallisti Reflections - "Why I'm Writing This"
As anyone who's met me probably knows all too well, I'm obsessively introspective. Understanding myself and how I interact with my world are foundational to everything I do. Continual self-improvement and growth are to me a way of life, if not an addiction. This trait is largely responsible for my having embarked on a year-long sailing expedition around the world, and is also the reason I've invested so much time and energy in writing about it.
The experience itself provides many fantastic opportunities to learn. For starters, going from zero knowledge about sailing (or boating of any kind) to world-cruising-ready in nine months was an intense auto-pedagogical experiment. I learned at least as much about how to learn, and how I in particular learn, as I did about the direct subject matter. Beyond that, the many intellectual, emotional, and logistical challenges associated with such an undertaking have shed light on aspects of my psyche that are rarely unearthed in my "normal" life.
But in order to take true advantage of this adventure, I need to do more than just survive it. I need to take the time to reflect on all the various ups and downs, the trials and tribulations, and peel away the details to unveil such lasting wisdoms as I can discern. By so doing, I can hopefully justify to myself all the time, money, and physical and spiritual energy I've invested, and perhaps even earn a solid return. I set out to make myself a deeper, richer, more balanced and versatile person, and can only hope to achieve such a goal by paying attention to the lessons life gives me.
Accordingly, these reflections are my attempts to look back on the events of the trip, one leg at a time, and tease out the most useful insights, the most memorable realizations. Forcing myself to condense vague concepts and sleepy epiphanies into detailed prose is a means of both crystallizing them into coherent thought, and cataloguing them for my own future reference.
A side effect of this mechanism is the output of a series of essays describing, in part, my world view and how it has evolved as the trip proceeds. Some people may even find these interesting enough to be worth reading, and if so, I'm thrilled to have provided some value to others. However, I make no promises that the contents are worthwhile or enlightening to anyone besides me. So if you're inclined to read on, then please don't take anything that follows prescriptively. Where the imperative is used, it's directed at myself; you're welcome to shop around, try things on, and keep whatever fits.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The Blog-Naming Dilemma
There are many reasons I decided to finally give in and start a blog. Partially it's general technophilia, partially it's an extra avenue to stay connected with friends and family while I'm travelling. Mostly, I've just discovered that I really like writing, and wanted a permanent venue to pursue that nascent passion and see where it takes me.
But, as I'm sure many bloggers before me have discovered, you face an immediate challenge: in a world suddenly (on a historical time scale) full of people seeking to be heard, what do you call your own meager addition to the milieu? I pondered this for some time. The purpose of a title is to set the reader's expectations, as well as provide a context for the ensuing content. What do I want my readers' context to be?
What draws me to writing is how subtly yet elegantly it demonstrates a (possibly the) defining ability of our species. Human beings are amazing for our capacity to formulate ideas - about our environment, and about ourselves. These ideas can be breathtakingly intricate and complex, and can enable us to achieve remarkable feats: writing a symphony, building an airplane, falling in love. However the truly incredible human trait is our ability to share these ideas with each other. When ideas are allowed to play across the canvas of human civilization, to evolve and grow upon its fertile soil, our potential is all but limitless.
And so, I sought to name this blog in a manner that highlights this trait: to emphasize that I, like my readers (OK so I'm making some assumptions), belong to a race gifted with the power to understand each other. This simple bond unites us all more profoundly than we usually care to acknowledge, but it is an essential element of our shared future together on the Earth. In that spirit, I look forward to sharing my ideas with you, and to hearing yours in return.
But, as I'm sure many bloggers before me have discovered, you face an immediate challenge: in a world suddenly (on a historical time scale) full of people seeking to be heard, what do you call your own meager addition to the milieu? I pondered this for some time. The purpose of a title is to set the reader's expectations, as well as provide a context for the ensuing content. What do I want my readers' context to be?
What draws me to writing is how subtly yet elegantly it demonstrates a (possibly the) defining ability of our species. Human beings are amazing for our capacity to formulate ideas - about our environment, and about ourselves. These ideas can be breathtakingly intricate and complex, and can enable us to achieve remarkable feats: writing a symphony, building an airplane, falling in love. However the truly incredible human trait is our ability to share these ideas with each other. When ideas are allowed to play across the canvas of human civilization, to evolve and grow upon its fertile soil, our potential is all but limitless.
And so, I sought to name this blog in a manner that highlights this trait: to emphasize that I, like my readers (OK so I'm making some assumptions), belong to a race gifted with the power to understand each other. This simple bond unites us all more profoundly than we usually care to acknowledge, but it is an essential element of our shared future together on the Earth. In that spirit, I look forward to sharing my ideas with you, and to hearing yours in return.
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