So, the other night we were at a marina bash, and as it usually turns out, all the guys are hanging around discussing important world events, like where’s the best place to get a cheap beer when cruising Mexico, and all the ladies are up on the dance floor entertaining the troops.
As I sat there and looked around, I realized just what a great lifestyle we have happened upon. I mean, everywhere in the world people are worrying about where the next bomb will explode, and our biggest problem at the time was how to go get another cold beer without losing your seat in the round-table discussion.
I remember standing on “Y” dock almost 20 years ago, talking with my neighbor. He had a 42’ sloop in the next slip, and we were discussing just how unfair life had treated him. He’d just sold his computer company for a few million dollars and the tax man had seen fit to charge him an extra million in taxes because he’d kept the property the building sat on.
As he sat there discussing the dubious parentage of the tax man and tax men in general, a seal swam by us, popped to the surface and started flipping a fish he’d just caught up into the air and than catching it.
Our conversation stopped for a couple minutes as we watched him frolic with his lunch, and as the seagulls came over to see if they couldn’t score a few morsels as well.
As the gulls were screaming, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” (I loved that part in Finding Nemo!), I looked over at him, and he had this big smile on his face.
“Ya know,” he said, as he caught me looking at him, “I guess I’m being pretty stupid, huh?”
“Lemme see if I have this right,” I asked, “Your biggest problem in life is that you just paid a million dollars in taxes?”
The reality of it is, no matter what your lifestyle, you’ll get a lot further in being happy with your life if you stop trying to find out what it is that sucks and look at what makes it good.
An old friend of mine, Doug McLoud, who is a blues singer by vocation, put it about as well as I’ve ever heard it.
“You can spot people who aren’t happy in life. They walk into a room looking like they smell something bad.”
Think about it! It’s like the guy that finds a $5 bill laying in the street and snivels because it wasn’t a $20. You know people like that. We all do! The scary thing is, sometimes we all get into that kind of funk.
Stop for a minute and think about whatever it is that has been your major malfunction in the past few weeks. Something that has just bugged you and kept you tossing and turning in the still of the night. Now put it mentally into a hat with other people’s troubles, and see if you don’t try and pull your own problem out of the hat.
Now roll this philosophy into our lifestyle of cruising. On my most recent sail across the Pacific a few months back, I found myself getting peeved at little things that would break: a stuck bilge switch, a light that burns out, a generator that won’t start. Each time, my first reaction was to snivel to myself, “Why me… Why now?”
But you know what? Here we were, on a beautiful sailboat that I (and the bank!) own, sailing across the Pacific Ocean with friends. How could life have been any better?
Yeah, little things will always go wrong, and you’d have to be a nut (or a saint) for them not to bother you. But the next time something like that happens, take a step back and see just how bad it is in reality. Compare it to being born Helen Keller, and your troubles pale by comparison.
Everyone knows the old fable about the man who was sniveling about having no shoes, and then he met a man with no legs. Well, the next time your bilge pump breaks, remember, some of us have to use a manual pump!!! Imagine!!
And so, as I sat there with a half dozen people who live my lifestyle, I felt warm inside. They were laughing and joking about the little things that happen with boats, and all was well with the world. We would worry about terrorism and work another day. This was the time we were meant to enjoy. And we did.
Today, I sit here looking back on that yesterday, and I count it as a keeper. A “keeper” is a certain amount of time that, somehow, will pop up throughout my life.
As long as you get enough keepers, what happens the rest of the time is irrelevant.
Every moment you really enjoy in your life is worth whatever time it took to make it happen.
