Boat people
Yesterday morning I had a client who is preparing to sail around the world. We bought a boat, she told me. We sold our house and our belongings. What we couldn’t sell we gave away. And everything that was left over went to the dump. She told me how it felt to get rid of all of the things that made up her life on land. Most of it, she explained, was easy to let go of. Her furniture, her old yearbooks, heirlooms from long-dead relatives. She was amazed to find out how little she was attached to it all. We spend our entire life acquiring meaningless THINGS, she said. Even after we sold so much of it, and gave so much away, we still had to pay to throw away two and a half tons of THINGS. The one piece of her old life that she decided to keep was a hand-woven basket of her grandmother’s that was filled with hundreds of buttons. When she was a little girl she used to visit her grandmother and sit for hours playing with the buttons, thrusting her hands in the basket to feel them fill in the spaces between her fingers. I still like to play with those buttons sometimes. So that’s the only thing I kept.
I was fascinated by her stories of sailing with her husband. She told me that the ocean is a small town; if you run into a couple in Mexico, you’re likely to see them again in South America. They follow the same general route, leaving each place before the stormy season begins. She told me that if I ever wanted to travel, I would be able to make a nice living if I looked for the boat people. Hairstylists and diesel mechanics, she said. Those are the folks we need after being at sea for eight months.
There’s something deeply romantic about cutting ties with the land and becoming a nomad of the sea. At first it seems claustrophobic; I can’t imagine what it would be like to sleep every night in a cramped boat cabin curled between damp sheets, and to wake up every morning with nowhere to go but up on deck. But there’s more to it than that. If you live on a boat, the ocean is your backyard. You’re held only by the limits of your skill and imagination. The wind can take you anywhere. How different that is from the kind of life we’re taught to want.
Whatever it is that is important to you is what becomes your reality, she told me. Look around you. What you see is who you are.
There are toys spread out under my feet and half-finished art projects piled on the corner of my computer desk. There are plants struggling to survive in my kitchen windowsill and books filling every corner of my living room. There is blue sparkly toothpaste drying in globs on the bathroom counter and tumbleweeds of cat hair scuttling across the hardwood floor. This is a house full of meaningless things. But a stranger who walked into this house would see these things and know in an instant who I am. And there is meaning in that.
I’m begging you to write a book. Something about your writing grabs me and won’t let go.
Comment by Deb Mills — May 29, 2009 @ May 29, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Ooo….I don’t know if I could ever do the boat thing although I can totally relate to what you’re saying. I’ve sailed a lot in the past, but usually for up to a week at a time for pure recreation. And although it’s lovely out at sea and I can heck the solidarity, I don’t think I could live with pump toilets and feeling icky with sweat most times especially when you’re sailing this part of the equator! I totally respect those who can do it though. But I need a clean functioning bathroom
Comment by Big Pumpkin — May 30, 2009 @ May 30, 2009 at 7:07 am
This time last year my husband, two kids and I donated all of our belongings to charity and moved onto the 30′ RV we’ve been traveling in for the past year.
It was an incredible thing to give everything away… to discover who we are “without anything” and to understand how truly little we need. At the end, we still had a few boxes of thing which seemed to sentimental to part with and I had a hard time trying to sort it and reduce it, finally weeping face down on the carpet in front of a NYT photojournalist. A year later, I cannot tell you what was in those boxes, what I kept or what I gave away.
Even though we are preparing to move back into a house to have another baby I hope to keep the powerful sense of self I have gained by becoming so naked of things.
xoxo
Comment by Aimee — May 30, 2009 @ May 30, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I second Deb.
Comment by Pepper — June 1, 2009 @ June 1, 2009 at 6:06 pm