Dove

by Robin Lee Graham

We are all made differently, of course. There are some of us whose peaks of happiness are higher and whose depression reaches deeper than the happiness and depression of others who cannot shout with joy or who never lose their cool. As for me, if I see grass greener than other people, if I hear sounds that they don’t hear, then the price I pay is in periods of frustration and loneliness.

Wasn’t my voyage prompted by the same longings for freedom, the same desire to get out of the rut and routine, to prove something to myself—to prove perhaps that a kid doesn’t have to be boxed in until he is a mental and spiritual dummy in a business suit?

But I know something about loneliness: Oh, man, I do! I know it can take you close to hell and sometimes, just sometimes, close to heaven.

One “sea thought” I might share here is that life has to have tension—the tension of making another port or finding a piece of gear to mend or how to face a squall. I mean, the guy who is really sick is the guy who has no goal, no ambition, nothing to go for. Having no goal would be like sailing in the doldrums forever.