Perspectives

I was checking out a few of my favorite cruising websites tonight and fell in love with this post on Windtraveler. It’s a great blog by a young family of 3 (soon to be 5 – she’s preggers with TWINS!) who have been out cruising the Caribbean for several years now. I really like her writing style – she tells it how it is – and they always seem to be up to something interesting. Plus, they seem so completely normal and the type of people that would actually be really cool to hang out with, a rarity in the world of otherwise opinionated retirees.

This quote in really struck a chord with me…

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun“.

– Into the Wild

So true! It was almost a year ago that we took a hard look at our lives (and ourselves) and decided that we needed to make some major changes. We found ourselves in a rut, with jobs that we hated, too many things that distracted us, all of which were neatly packaged in a suffocating cocoon of routine. We were walking around each day numb to life, just going thru the motions, feeling both guilty and ungrateful that we were so unhappy with everything that we had. So we decided to change.

Sometimes we find ourselves harping on the day to day efforts of living life on a boat – especially now that it’s been so cold outside and we’re in the middle of some major projects. It’s posts like this that serve as a reminder for us to not loose focus on WHY we decided to embark on this crazy adventure and gives us the boost to keep going.