27 Years at Sea
27 years. Twenty seven years, and I’m still alive. All the childhood dreams of death at the hands of rock and roll must come to fruition this year, if I am to join the ranks of the immortals. Yet, at twenty seven I find myself more and more pleased with this different breed of happiness I have discovered. It took me years to find it, and I still surely haven’t plumbed the depths of it yet, but they have seen me through to survive until now.
There are friendships I have made, both with my family as well as with various vagabonds, dreamers, and drifters whose names I have collected along the way that have brought a stillness to the seas of my mind I could have never foreseen. Rough waters still come, though some fine day I hope to admonish them completely, but they never feel to rough to ride now. My sails have been sewn with the care of a man who has studied his mistakes like a manual, a guide for future freedom, though the fingers that did the stitching weren’t always my own. In my life I have strived to take the advice of those who had felt the icy sting of water over the rails, of those who had already spent years repairing sails, and still sought the excitement of the ride.
Twenty-seven years spent fighting, spent working, spent learning, spent seeking some path I thought would open up like golden gates and guide my way. In the end I found most direction to be misleading, most purpose to be unrealistic, and that the only difference between life and dreams was the believing. I found little reason to seek the status quo, the tourniquet tie and the quaint little debtors home. For me it was always the sea I was seeking, a world where sky meets earth in simply a different shade of blue, and there is no real direction except for the one you choose. There’s no beaten path, or road less traveled, only the motion of the waves we make, and the winds our sails have gathered.
The ride is one year shorter. This well-beaten boat, one year older. Yet I come at this year with more strength than ever before, a stronger wind at my back, a better knowledge of my ship, and those stitched up sails made stronger still by storms and war. My boat feels stronger than it will ever be and I could never presume to ask for more, but knowing how way leads on to way I know that some day I will once again find a shore, to be either battered upon, or to discover, it matters little which anymore. I have found a contentment in each, the likes of which I have never known before, a contentment that has allowed me to be lost at sea and still just calling it “free.”
Very enlightening and very true… In my opinion. Thank you, I needed that.