An Examined Life

I’ve been spending a lot of time over these past couple of weeks thinking about “once in a lifetime” experiences. In this short time there have been events like watching Lindsay Vonn win the Downhill at Whistler, and then there are those like 64 crew members, all friends of my son, surviving the sinking of their ship.

I have followed the comments from a friend who is in Haiti helping administrate the setting up of programs to get the earthquake victims on their feet again, at the same time as reading about the tragedy of the young Georgian Luger.

I am wondering what affect any or all of that will have on me in the coming years. What will I remember? What will move me to action? To Change? How will I be motivated to be different or better? What will I do with what I know?

I have an aversion to the ‘Bucket List’. The notion that we create a list of things we want to experience before we ‘kick the bucket’. I worry that our lives can quickly become a series of ‘Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt’ activities.

I helped chaperone a group of high school kids on one of those trips to Mexico to build houses for poor people. One of the kids, a 17 yr old, said that if felt good to be able to ‘tick off helping poor people from my bucket list’.

I am all for seeking out those once in a lifetime events, and I definitely want to have my list of things I want to do. Where the challenge comes is having those opportunities become a means rather than an end to themselves.

Five years ago I stood on a dock in Louisburg Nova Scotia and watched as my son and the other 60 odd members of his crew practiced an abandon ship drill. The Concordia was tied up alongside in a calm bay. The concept of a disaster seemed almost absurd under the circumstances.

The Captain stood at the railing on the bridge and held a stop watch. Once everyone had assembled at mid-ships in front of him he looked at the time. He was not amused. He raised his voice in anger saying they had been too slow and some at the back were not taking the drill seriously. One of the teachers did not even bother putting on their immersion suit – understandably though, I mean it was only make believe.

They rehearsed that drill twice more than morning, and at least once a month for the entire ten months he was aboard.

It was the same for Patrick, my second son who also sailed the ship, crossing the Atlantic four times – including once through the southern ocean enroute to Cape Town.

Last Wednesday, it stopped being a drill. Disasters never happen gradually. Concordia was sailing its way through yet another rough day on the Atlantic – kids were in class, some below in their bunks, others preparing for lunch. Without warning a wind pushing down, rather than across, drove the masts and sails down to the water where, once submerged, meant the boat could not right itself if it tried.

Over 300km from shore the crew donned immersion suits, launched life rafts, and all hands abandoned ship within 15 minutes. They drifted over the swells and watched as the SV Concordia, the skookum 188ft, steel, three masted purpose built Barquentine, slipped below the surface and vanished to the bottom.

The variables of that situation are too numerous to count, yet, with the exception of some bumps and bruises, all 64 members of the Concordia crew are now safely on shore returning to families and loved ones. Not a member lost.

In the midst of my remorse at the loss of Concordia, such an important part of our lives for the last 5 years, I am incredibly thankful. Thankful for the life changing experiences my two sons had aboard her, thankful for the role models and inspiration of the teachers and crew, thankful to Terry Davies, the founder who had the original idea and made it a reality.

But most of all, at this point, I am thankful to Capt. Straab who through his years of experience respected the sea enough to be unwilling to accept anything but a total commitment to the practise of safety – and how that will be the lasting hallmark of those who sailed the SV Concordia.

“I knew it wouldn’t always be that way” said my friend discussing a particularly rough patch in his life. I didn’t hear much of the rest of what he said as I was so distracted by that statement. How could he have known that?

I remember my son Patrick telling me about an experience he had while sailing. He felt terribly seasick one day while on Galley duty. The cook, such the kind man that he was, sent Patrick below to sort the good potatoes from the bad. As Patrick recounts the story he said he felt just terrible, but got through it by reminding himself it was only for now, that once back on deck and on to other things he’d feel different.

Patrick and my friend knew it wouldn’t always be bad because their past experience as human beings, and that of other humans around them, told them so. It’s incredibly rare that any crisis in our lives stays acute for any real period. Sometimes it’s just time that changes or heals, but often it’s gaining a different perspective or point of view once we dry our eyes and lift our heads up to look around.

When I finally tuned back into the conversation it became clear that my friend’s realization that he wouldn’t always feel the way he did was the first step in him not feeling that way. He could look at his crisis just a little bit more objectively and take some steps to weather the storm and set a path beyond it.

I like to live in the moment, but I also tend to wallow in the moment. I so appreciated the reminder that while the reality may not change, the true impact of that reality and my response to it certainly can, and probably will.

My laptop was acting up. It wasn’t doing what I needed. Something was wrong. So, I just turned it off, waited a few minutes, then turned it back on, and everything was fine again. Go figure.

On one of my trips to Africa I was in a van with a group of guys heading from one town to the airport in the capital city. We rounded a corner to find a semi trailer diagonal across the road. There’d been a small slide of earth on to the road, and the truck was stuck, wheels spinning in the mud.

The driver’s own solution was to keep putting his foot on the gas, wheels whirring around – the truck going nowhere. Oddly he repeated this ineffective activity over and over again. It might have been amusing to stand and watch as they tried to figure it out, but we had a plane to catch. Lucky for them we were from the land of snow. It took a lot to convince them to do it our way. Gathering sticks and branches we provided the wheels the traction they needed and within a few minutes the truck was unstuck and on its way.

Like the driver of that truck I don’t let go of things easily. My tendency is to focus on the issue assuming that the more time and attention I give it, the more likely I can find a solution. I often feel like I am spinning my wheels – in my mind all the issue needs is more gas.

It pains me to say this, as it seems too simple, but maybe like my laptop, all I really need to do is turn off…and wait a few minutes.

The sincere poem from the woman with inoperable cancer reminds me once again that I shouldn’t put off that life I’ve always said I wanted. I should no longer complain about the petty issues of my day. Why? Because, just like her, I am going to die – hopefully later than sooner, but ultimately its inevitable.

I watched a movie about a sad, lonely woman who discovers she has a month to live. She takes her severance pay (oh yah, she also loses her job and boyfriend on that same day), and rents a loft over looking the Hudson River. Then she maxes her credit cards filling her place with all the stuff she apparently always wanted. Then she starts having sex with the delivery guy, then with the pizza delivery girl, and then (this is when we turned off the movie) with both of them.

I don’t think this is as enlightened as the back of the DVD case suggested. The freedom of choice and expression motivated by one’s imminent demise may simply be a realization of a limit to the consequence of one’s actions. In the case of the young woman in the movie, she’ll be gone before the credit card bills to come in, or the genital warts appear.

It’s all fine for our poet friend to encourage us to pursue that career that “doesn’t seem to make sense” – she won’t be around to help with the rent payments or the kid’s new shoes.

The rest of us who don’t yet know our ‘best before’ date, we have to live a life that includes responsibility. We have to count the costs. The trick then, regardless of who we are or the position we have,  is not to live assuming we’ll be hit by a beer truck on the way home, but to live knowing that every decision and choice we make is significant and has impact – for us, and for those around us.