Sail Away
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowline. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
- Mark Twain
Twain's call to adventure has niggled at me all morning. I think of our youth and the drive to risk and discover. How modern society has strapped that adventurous impulse to a desk. The newspapers this weekend were filled with articles about college grads returning to campus life for graduate degrees, unable to find employment, slipping back into the "prepraring for life" apprenticeships that are the pillar of academic life. I, too, chose this path in the late seventies: driven back to campus for a professional degree in the midst of national unemployment and inflation. We are here again? The national economy fails our fledging new work force. But isn't the real issue the compression created between these years of childhood, education, and work? Where is the adventure, the dream, the joy of discovery found within scheduled lessons and sports, "summer educational opportunities" we used to call camp, and the anxious college grad? Have we robbed our children of the spice of independence and freedom? A life to be made in the living?
On a recent televised sports event, the Longboard Channel Crossing Race between Molokai and Maui, one of the top surf board competitors mentioned having taken a year off to sail the world, a dream of his. And now he wondered if he'd jeopardized his professional sports standing by doing so. Then suddenly he grinned into the glare of the sun and said, "Nope. Best year of my life!"
Can you say that? Can I? Can we look at a single grand adventure in our lives with such satisfaction? And isn't life just a little bit less if we can't? I can't believe it's ever too late to explore, to throw off the bowlines. Let Twain's words fill our sails. Choose to not regret, choose to do what we dream of. And by all means, blow a big wind into the sails of our children as they poise at the edge and embrace the unknown of the world. There is so much to do.
- Mark Twain
Twain's call to adventure has niggled at me all morning. I think of our youth and the drive to risk and discover. How modern society has strapped that adventurous impulse to a desk. The newspapers this weekend were filled with articles about college grads returning to campus life for graduate degrees, unable to find employment, slipping back into the "prepraring for life" apprenticeships that are the pillar of academic life. I, too, chose this path in the late seventies: driven back to campus for a professional degree in the midst of national unemployment and inflation. We are here again? The national economy fails our fledging new work force. But isn't the real issue the compression created between these years of childhood, education, and work? Where is the adventure, the dream, the joy of discovery found within scheduled lessons and sports, "summer educational opportunities" we used to call camp, and the anxious college grad? Have we robbed our children of the spice of independence and freedom? A life to be made in the living?
On a recent televised sports event, the Longboard Channel Crossing Race between Molokai and Maui, one of the top surf board competitors mentioned having taken a year off to sail the world, a dream of his. And now he wondered if he'd jeopardized his professional sports standing by doing so. Then suddenly he grinned into the glare of the sun and said, "Nope. Best year of my life!"
Can you say that? Can I? Can we look at a single grand adventure in our lives with such satisfaction? And isn't life just a little bit less if we can't? I can't believe it's ever too late to explore, to throw off the bowlines. Let Twain's words fill our sails. Choose to not regret, choose to do what we dream of. And by all means, blow a big wind into the sails of our children as they poise at the edge and embrace the unknown of the world. There is so much to do.
No comments have been added yet.
