I took up skydiving as a hobby when I was 19 years old. It was a way to make new friends and confront the fear of falling towards Mother Earth. Took about 13 jumps before I learned to relax and enjoy the sensation of freefall, as 10 second delays before opening got me close to “terminal velocity” where the air began to feel like a mushy waterbed and I finally felt in control. Skydiving was thought of as extreme sport back in 1978, but the risk of injury or death was never on my mind. It was all about fun, maximizing my enjoyment of life, enjoying the camaraderie of fellow jumpers who inspected each other’s gear for safety, finding my tribe. We all SCUBA dived together down in Mexico as well, the same group of trusted friends looking after each other.
Covid-19 seems to have been a wakeup call for some folks. Our friends Jamie and Behan on SV Totem coach wanna-be and newbie cruisers, and they expected cruising plans and ambitions to be crushed by the pandemic. While the current health crisis has kept most of us cruisers from moving about, what Behan reports is that to her surprise, she and Jamie never been busier with their growing list of coaching clients and boat owners wanting new sails to prepare for their cruising dreams. Sounds like they’re not going to continue putting “turning the money crank” ahead of their life’s ambitions.
As my high school English teacher Nancy Coward was fond of saying, the only 2 things guaranteed in life are death and taxes. Death seemed abstract when I was young and even when close friends were killed in auto accidents, by skydiving mishaps or rare infections, the feeling of “it can’t happen to me” was always foremost in my mind. More recently my closest friends have died of cancer, ALS and other maladies and their deaths have had a much greater impact on me. As we get older our bodies malfunction, betraying us and occasionally trashing our dreams. Pretty much nobody is immune to this, and ultimately “we ain’t gettin’ out of this alive”. The realization that life is truly finite, that tomorrow might be the day I’m diagnosed with a fatal illness or get squashed by a drunken driver, that realization marked a turning point in my own life.
Perhaps the best question to ask yourself – “is this as good as it gets”? Have you reached the pinnacle of your personal aspirations? Do you have a mate that shares your dreams? Maybe you’re at the peak of your earning power or your position at work or society, but is there anything else you and your partner want to do before you die? If you were diagnosed with a terminal illness would you find yourself wishing you had led a different life?
My mom’s dad scrimped and saved his whole life so he could travel extensively after retiring from the railroad. He ended up with a nice pile of cash but got to use it up paying for his nursing home care, as about the time he retired various illnesses had put him in a wheelchair. My own dad worked until he was nearly 70, and when he finally retired found he had a higher income than when working, ultimately wishing he had retired sooner. Luckily mom and dad had good health, tottering into antiquity in good style.
So here we are in French Polynesia, currently trapped by closed borders and the uncertainty of the lingering pandemic effects. It’s not bad being trapped in paradise, and ours is certainly a high-class problem. As we game out our various options for the next one or more years, the real questions are “where do we still want to go, how much time and money do we need to budget, and are we in a hurry”? Illness or accident might smite us at any time, so our focus remains on fun, friendship, a highly satisfying lifestyle and finding meaning in our own existence. It’s a big world and there’s no way we’ll get to experience it all, but we are aiming to hit the highlights.
As our pal Trevor Griffiths has always noted, “life is what happens while you’re making plans”.
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