On Passion

Current Location: Alesund, Norway

Current Coordinates: 62°28'10"N 6°9'30"E

Next Stop: Lerwick, Shetland Islands

Listening: "The Divided Sky," by Phish, 10/31/94 Glens Falls Civic Center

Quick General Update:

I'm still in Alesund, although it looks like we'll finally be clearing out of here tomorrow around noon. Mike and I checked the forecast this morning and it looks like we've got decent conditions ahead, at least ones good enough to push us across the open ocean to the Lerwick, Shetland Islands. The passage will take us approximately two days of straight sailing. For those of you paying close attention (thanks by the way), expect another post on Wednesday or Thursday of next week.

Our autohelm is finally fixed after a week of waiting around on Frank in Oslo. We got the device back and did everything we could yesterday during a 4 hour day trip around Alesund to make it malfunction. There was no "link failure" between the autohelm and the GPS, so we're assuming that there might have been a weather related problem with some of the electrical contacts between the two devices that has now sorted itself out.

We sail to the Shetland Islands tomorrow. I'm very excited to finally get to Scotland.

The Reality of Passion

Moments after boarding Gitana almost a month ago now, Skipper Mike handed me an essay that Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcylce Maintenance, Bantam, 1975) had written called "Cruising Blues and Their Cure" that was originally published in Esquire magazine in May of 1977. In it, Pirsig calls into question the popularity of sailing as an "escape" activity and supplants conventional romanticism with concrete, realistic images of what life at sea is really like. He writes, "Everything is breaking down on this boat," and "money is running short," and "the people back home were friendlier, and most notably and ironically,"all this is just running away from reality."

However, ask Pirsig points out, all of this calls into the question the true nature of reality. In our society the word "reality" informs a lifestyle structured by a 40-hour-a-week 9-5 job where car payments, mortgages, "reality" tv shows at night, online dating, and church on Sunday define the perameters and the dimensions of our existence. But I believe that our complete subjectivity to this way of life is a symptom of a much greater problem.

I believe that in America we have replaced passion with convenience.

But before we can understand our misunderstanding of reality, let's look more carefully at another word. Hold this spot.

In theological terms the word "passion" literally means "suffering." When we talk about the Passion of Christ, we're referring to the pains and suffering He endured for sake. We're told that Jesus Christ suffered for humanity because of our imperfection, because of our mortality and because of our fallibility (See "Abba-Solution"). Islam, too has a word that approximates the same meaning--hold your breath--it's "jihad," a word that has taken on all sorts of sensational and zealous meanings in America since 9/11. But "jihad" literally means "struggle," which invariably involves some degree of suffering. Now that we've arrived at a more thorough (but perhaps less user-friendly) understanding of the word "passion," we're ready to deal with my claim.

In America we have gone to great lengths to minimize the amount of passion in our everyday lives. The internet and vast media that we subscribe to effectifvely distance and protect us from eachother. There is less real interaction and very little willingness to move beyond our comfort zones (e-zones?) where we might encounter an "unsecure connection" with a real live person. (I debated using the word insecure before connection, but I fear that I'm starting to sound too critical.) We have replaced real adventure with web surfing, emotion with emoticon, down-time with friends with downloading alone, and so on. In our relationships we have replaced commitment with "let's see if this works out," "us," with "me" and "I." We prescribe drugs that even us out, lift us up, drag us down, and as always, we drink too much. We do all that we can to smooth out the ups and downs, turn down the volume, and lessen joy and pain that are neccesarily constant companions in life's journey. I'm fearing that the total effect of this kind of reality is that we are replacing love with apathy, life with death, and much needed passion with convenience.

But the sea has waves, and like it or not, this is where we're forced to endure ups and downs, weather storms, and trust shipmates with our lives. If things get nasty, (and they do) we're forced to manage with the resources and conditions present--there is no "logging off" or "reset" button. There are no numbing agents, no synthetic highs. We are forced to deal with our failures, our weaknesses, our regrets, and yes, our successes too. The permanence of the sea forces us to weather the storms of our ephemeral lives. And, thankfully, it forces us to be passionate once again.

If you go back to my description of Skipper Mike, you'll see where I've described him as possessing a "stoic spirituality" that I initially mistook for cruelty or callousness. After having been at sea with him, I now have a much greater appreciation for Mike's spiritual nature and for his understanding of what reality requires of us.

"When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite."

--William Blake, English Poet, 1757-1827

PS-- If you haven't done so already, do yourself a favor and click the link above in the "listening" section that says "The Divided Sky." Some of the fugue stuff going on at the beginning is a bit esoteric and hard to follow but if you endure (or if you fastforward) you'll watch the guitar player channeling divine energy during the last 5 or so minutes of the clip. That, my brothers and sisters, is passion.