What
can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that
separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of
discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous...
-
Thomas Merton
I
decided to attempt the possibility of this project in the spring of 2003,
when the idea came to me through a brainstorming session testing out options
of building various modes of self-powered transportation.
The romantic appeal of a sailboat caught my attention and I couldn’t
keep it from my consciousness. I let
the idea rest for a while before I really began pursuing it more directly
in the fall. The sailboat project just seems to fit my personality
and worldview. I have known this since
the beginning, and others have verified my instincts along the way.
A
large part of my philosophy, theology, and consciousness consists of a dreaming
mentality. My mind is constantly preoccupied by a driving
force to attempt new challenges, epic
journeys, and to acquire any information that leads to a deeper understanding
of reality.
The
depth of these dreams is partially caused by the curious dimension of my personality. My desires to explore the mysteries of the world
have been a part of my life ever since I was a young child. My mom would often wonder where I was for hours
and then later find me at the top of a tall tree or somewhere in the far-off
corner of the field behind our house. I
was always the child who would walk right up to the edge of the cliff, just
to catch a glimpse of the view below my feet.
Growing
up, my hunger for creative exploration was fed by expeditions into the woods,
many family camping trips, and building magnificent “worlds” from my large
collection of Legos. In junior high, I would spend my summers exploring
locally by bicycle, riding hundreds of miles each week just because I had
the ability and the roads were available.
In high school I began backpacking, an activity that allowed me to
walk myself into almost any landscape possible for days or even weeks. I instantly fell in love with the new variety
of places that I could explore with my own power, with my own mind.
In
the past 5 years, I’ve developed comprehensive outdoor skills and exploration
in more technical and professional ways. I’ve
spent two summers as a wilderness guide for high school students, showing
them creation and providing adventure through backpacking,
canoeing, rock climbing, mountain biking, and caving
expeditions. The more time I have spent
in the outdoors, the more it has called me back. The beauty, simplicity, and raw challenge of
these environments has had a profound impact on the way I search for meaning
in life, and the way that my searching is motivated and sustained.
St.
Augustine said, “The world is a book, and those who
do not travel have read only one page.” International
travel brought my exploration into a new dimension and allowed me to realize
the incredible global potential at my fingertips.
My semester of “studying” in the Middle East
brought new ways of understanding the world, deeper insights into religion,
politics, and the cultural contexts of many issues and perspectives. In many ways, I felt as a pilgrim passing through
the “land between,” learning new lessons and reach a deeper spiritual understanding.
There is a paradoxical beauty in the land there that pulls people inward,
something that reaches beyond mere understanding into the depths of history.
Another
experience this summer in Africa reminded me of the
immense complexity of issues that can arise through the abuse of power within
leadership. This experience was one
of the most challenging times of my life, and I’m still realizing its effects
in my attitudes toward leadership, religion, abuse, and hope.
I feel that this experience has emphasized the necessity of reacting
against the abuse and evil present in the world, and the importance of seizing
freedom when all else seems to hold you down.
Motivations:
In
April (4.11.03) of last spring when I was beginning to think about the sailboat
project, I wrote,
…Don’t
stop pursuing those dreams, because I believe that God develops them from
somewhere inside of your subconscious. He
puts those desires in front of you for a reason.
As
C.S. Lewis
articulated:
If
I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the
most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
From
a journal entry this past December (12.28.03):
The
secret of life is striving for something with all of your heart, putting your
entire self into a dream, an ideal, the pursuit of an adventure, while knowing
at the same time that you will never be able to [completely] achieve it. That’s genuine hope and inspiration… [which
should be accompanied by awareness that]... [l]ife is also good at backfiring in a surprisingly strange
ways. I feel that I am being called
to these journeys; these pilgrimages wake something up inside of me that has
been resting for quite some time. It
feels like my true self is eventually being materialized in the dreams that
I’ve built up the courage and experience to finally start pursuing…. To take
a journey that is so unbelievable that it has to work, that is what faith
in God is. … [or as the Matrix similarly states,] “It’s
going to work because no one has ever tried it before…”
And
at times the immensity of my dreams is almost too much to bear all at once.
The farther I can see into the depth I’ve uncovered, the larger the
distance of the gap between where I am and where I could be becomes known
to me. The challenge of this space
for growth only inspires more dreams within my mind, more ways to explore
the world to its extremes, and a deep hunger for understanding the magnificent
complexities God has planted within the world.
I
placed a large world map on the wall above my desk to remind me how big the
world is. I want to be there, I want
to be everywhere. [As U2 says,] “I
want to run, I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside. I want to reach out, and touch the place, where
the streets have no name….”
I
… use momentum to keep myself going. Keep
pushing, further up and further in. Life
is that deep; it’s just that we don’t always see it right away.
9.9.03
I
believe that the dreams I find consuming my consciousness are really glimpses
of the reality that God lovingly intends for all of humanity.
The closer my adventurous experiences bring these images to my life,
the more I crave to extend my existence closer to “the world that I was made
for”. As I Corinthians 13:12 states, “Now we see but a poor reflection in a mirror,
then we shall see face to face. Now
I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
The
greatest hope I have found in the world is through dreaming.
Earlier this fall, I came across a passage by James
Allen (from As a Man Thinketh), investigating dreamers…The time that I came
across these words was a time when I was trying to rebuild my identity and
discover my true source of hope.
What
is the sailboat?
It
is the yearning, the journey towards, and the realization of a dream.
And
its completion allows continued exploration.
It is like a freed child, a being that has the ability to embark on
a world ahead of itself; and a being that also has the ability to return.
(5.10.03)
As
I wrote last spring (5.12.03),
…My
worldview could be defined as exploration.
Build a boat and sail away. God
has created a curiosity within my soul that explodes out in all directions,
and if it is stifled, I feel as if my inner parts are being smashed into oblivion.
Risk
and Danger | Courage and Rewards
“The
person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.
The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.” - Dale Carnegie
The
very concept of dreaming involves a sense of risk and danger.
It requires, as E.M. Forester says, that "We must be willing to
let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting
for us." It requires a letting go of the familiar expectations
that have been placed upon us in order to leave space for any possibility
God intends to bring our way. It requires
total personal investment into a focused goal, leaving the rest behind, and
running the race towards the prize that you passionately seek.
The
very risk involved in this process is what makes the journey fulfilling.
The courage needed to acquire essential skills to match the potential
danger generates vitality and fully integrates a person into the process. G.K. Chesterton discusses this necessary component
of dreaming:
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means
a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that
will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism
for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers.
It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. The paradox is the
whole principle of courage, even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage.
A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.
He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of
it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to
combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying.
He must not merely cling to live, for then he will be a coward, and will not
escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide,
and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference
to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.
I
believe that only through this type of courage will we truly understand what
it is like to pursue the ultimate capacity God intends for us.
A challenging journey requires courage for its completion, and without
a component of risk, the process lacks integrity.
I often desire challenges that require a higher degree of courage to
meet a new goal. The risk must seek
to match the potential of the reward, and this seeking motivates the dreams
I pursue.
Fears
Such courage as Chesterton describes is only matched by the fear that
it faces. As I have seen my personal dreams grow, I have
become increasingly aware of the fear I need to overcome in order to continue
working towards them. This fear can
simply be not reaching my goal, or it can be more complex, dishonoring the
dream and threatening to expose my most raw identity to a critical world which
can not understand or does not desire to.
I feel that this risk is the greatest of all, the risk of sharing yourself
and your deepest desires with the world, because if you lose confidence in
your identity, the rest of the process may fade into the background.
Momentum
If
you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.
-Henry
David Thoreau
From
September (9.27.03):
I
started the boat this week, and it was surprisingly challenging to begin. I think part of it is a fear on my part that
I’m going to make mistakes, and that I don’t have much experience working
with wood. I want to be so careful
and make this thing to perfection, or maybe I just don’t want to taint the
idealism of it all with my limited knowledge and skills.
But
I needed to begin. I needed to start
a process that began with enough momentum to keep it going. It feels like you’re in a really high gear and
to start the movement, it just takes a bit of force to turn those wheels.
And my will power made it start. I
started with the most basic aspect, building the jig.
It’s all square carpentry, basically a rectangular box.
It started a little rough, but as I went my confidence began to grow,
and I started working faster. Momentum
is a wonderful thing. I know this project
will take a lot of time, and a lot of discipline, and a lot of patience.
And I want to see it come together more and more as I work.
Throughout
the past few years, multiple independent people have described me in two ways:
very intense and very laid back. Or
some have similarly said that I have two speeds: full throttle and not running. And I think I have to agree with them. As someone who likes to push the extremes, I
find myself fully pursuing each polarity.
I work hard and I rest hard. In
beginning the sailboat project, I knew that it would work if I only began;
my driven personality would find completion once the ball started rolling.
So
I began the journey. I decided to invest
my dreams into one specific manifestation, the process of building a sailboat.
It is important to know that before beginning construction I basically
knew nothing about sailboats or carpentry.
A large portion of my goal was to learn each stage as I encountered
it, requiring my constant attention to the process and promising continual
challenges throughout the journey.
The
Journey
Once
a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and
takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity…no two are alike.
And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after
years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
- John Steinbeck “Travels with Charley”
Lessons
Nurturing
a Dream: Control | Freedom
As I have mentioned before, the sailboat project became a symbolic
capstone to the expression of my dream based philosophy.
The monumental investment necessary to initiate and sustain this journey
required a complete vulnerability to all of the potential outcomes and complications.
I was caught off guard when one visitor asked me if my boat has a personality. My immediate response was that I couldn’t tell
at this point. Now in retrospect, I
realize that I had a clear expectation for the personality of my growing sailboat.
My expectation was for perfection.
After attending a sailboat show in Annapolis,
MD, in the fall and observing remarkable
craftsmanship of the beautiful boats in the harbor, I knew that my boat must
rival the others, in beauty and in spirit.
My
journal states:
…
[A]nother thing that the Annapolis
boat show has taught me is the importance of precision. The craftsmanship that I saw there was incredible.
It made me want to do the best possible
job with my own boat. I want it to
be perfect and incredible. Motivation
is an amazing thing. The ideal image
of my perfect boat and my anticipation of its completion almost seems more
important than the finished product itself. I even wonder if the completion of the project
will be a sort of let-down.
The high standard of craftsmanship for my boat motivated me to spend
hours perfecting each cut, curve, and notch.
I read and re-read my 80 page instructional book, called Arch Davis,
my boat designer in Belfast, Maine
whenever I needed any sort of clarification, and showed hesitation before
approaching each new stage, only feeling confident after I could see that
my time had produced near perfect results.
I knew that it was more important to respect the process, learn the
necessary skills and take the time to make perfect symmetry the ultimate goal.
However, my boat is not perfect, and no one knows that better than
I do. I could go through the entire boat and show
you each mistake, every place where the sides do not exactly match each other,
and every slip of the chisel, plane, or table saw.
They are everywhere, but you probably wouldn’t even notice them if
you visited the shop. I am definitely
my toughest critic.
I have tried to control every stage of this process to attain perfection,
to shape my artistic creation through precision, patience, and discipline. One day when I was working on the boat, I realized
that I had made a minor mistake on a cut, which consequentially shifted the
stem about ¼ inch from where it sits into the bulkhead at station 2’4”, causing
a gap between the framing and where the planking would meet. The epoxy glue had already set to absolute irreversibility,
and I knew that something had happened that I could not change.
Frustrated with my lack of foresight to make the correct cut and wondering
how this would affect the project down the road, I was forced to let the control
fall from my hands. Even with all of the effort I had made towards
perfection, mistakes were still bound to happen. And then an even greater realization came to
me: the boat would still float. I found
a way to fix the problem, transposing my perception of an absolute structural-compromising
flaw into a slight (and probably unnoticeable) cosmetic flaw.
As
I continued throughout the construction journey, I gave up more control to
the fate of the project, realizing that my absolute goals for the boat were
not always going to play out. I also started to see other parts of my life
that I had a tight grip on, where my dreams were so strongly focused that
I was unable to let other minor interferences teach new lessons. A dream is a creation of its own, and the dreamer’s
relationship with it must be one of careful nurture. If the dream is held too tightly, it will be
crushed, and if it is held too loosely, it will fall from your hands. Finding the right relationship between the intensity
of expected perfection and the wisdom of inevitable gaps grants a dream the
freedom to develop and mature, growing into the capacity it must realize.
Identity:
Community | Individuality
Yet
it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that
you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in
obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.
-
Thomas Merton
Throughout my life I’ve gotten the impression that being a very outgoing,
extroverted, and social person is part of the path towards success and personal
fulfillment. During CA training my
sophomore year, I manipulated a Myers-Brigs personality test to make myself
an extrovert, thinking that it would be more compatible with the person I
was expected to be. I ended up as a
98% extrovert, which as I now realize more completely, is incredibly far from
the truth.
Since returning from my cross cultural experience in the Middle
East, I have noticed that I have become more introverted and introspective. The complexity of knowledge associated with
an intense learning experience often causes a person to reexamine their identity,
to determine how this new awareness integrates with their understanding of
the world and within their role in a broader global context.
As I’ve continued to process my international travel experiences, I’ve
grown to realize that even though most of the learning occurs during the journey,
it is ultimately realized upon returning.
The sailboat construction process has been a mixture of solitude and
community. Although many people have
provided a helping hand along the way, I have spent a large amount of time
working alone, interacting only with the process and myself. I have focused my attention into a specific,
personal dream, and in doing so, I separated parts of myself from the surrounding
community. The solitude that I have
found in this project has created space between my personal and community
perspectives, and has illuminated the qualities of both that I deeply desire.
It also has revealed one of my largest fears.
In
the past month (3.8.04 & 4.5.04), I wrote,
Graduation
is almost here…there’s a boat to build, friendships to maintain, and a life
to fit together. I’m scared. I’m scared of leaving this place not knowing
where I am and who I can take with me. I’m
scared of being alone and losing those connections. I’m scared of isolation, whether by random circumstance
or as a subconsciously and self-induced [byproduct of the pursuing my dreams]….
I
feel that most people can’t relate to me or understand my dream-driven worldview,
so I focus inward on acquiring these personal accomplishments and introspecting.
And in doing so, I cut off the very branch I am standing on, because
I need a community to see my true identity.
That
paradox: Community and Individual Identity.
In some ways it could summarize my year.
Which am I motivated by? Which
have I become? Which do I truly care
about? Which will I miss more when
I leave this place in a couple of weeks?
This year I have felt my identity being torn between my individual
dreams and the community I serve. The
investment required to undertake the sailboat construction project was a small
scale version of what would be required for the pursuit of larger aspirations. As the investment required to accomplish a dream
grows, I fear the potential accompanying separation from the community.
I have realized that the relationships I have made over the past few
years are as equally captivating as many of my dreams, and my struggle has
been to invest in both, fully and simultaneously.
What comes next? How will this
community continue to be part of my life after April
25, 2004? It is through
interactions with this community that I have uncovered my identity over the
past 4 years. I have been able to see
myself through a diversity of relationships with others, the various experiences
that these people have introduced to me, and service I have offered to both. And only by retreating in solitude have I been
able to see these discoveries I have made.
How do I reconcile this paradox? Is
it possible to live completely in both solitude and community?
Thomas
Merton says,
“To
leave the ‘world,’ then, is to leave oneself first of all and to begin to
live for others.”
At
this point I don’t have a complete answer to this question. I know that I crave relationships and fully
understand my need to seek solitude. I
struggle with this paradox, equally seeking opposites, understanding that
my identity requires both complements, unwilling to compromise the integrity
of one for the other, and also understanding that for this reason I must.
Contentment:
Now | Future
A few weeks ago I knew that I had a choice.
The boat progress was starting to accelerate to the point where completion
by graduation appeared to be a realistic possibility.
Knowing my ability to focus on something that I pour myself entirely
into it, I knew that I could finish the boat by graduation.
Dreaming requires the ability to reach into the future, to explore
all of the wonderful possibilities that our choices offer us.
It asks us to be willing to detach ourselves from what is going on
in the now and embrace the fate of God’s will knowing that we have actively
shaped it. The future is tremendously
exciting, and the uncertainties that it brings greatly overpower the security
of an absolute next step. In order
to dream, it is necessary to project your visions into the future.
My choice was to either work like a madman, putting 16+ hours per day
into completion of the project, or taking those precious hours and investing
them into the relationships that have shaped and supported my worldview throughout
my college experience.
Living in the here and now is what builds the future.
What is the point of always looking ahead if we are completely missing
what is constantly available in front of our eyes?
Annie Dillard says, "Beauty and grace are performed whether or
not we sense them. The least we can
do is try to be there." We must
try to be aware of the now, try to be fully aware of the beauty and meaning
in the process, seeing it as a snapshot in the journey, and gaining from it
what we must to continue on our way.
The decision I needed to make ultimately questioned what I valued in
the “now.” The time that I had remaining
to finish this project was priceless. What
part of my life could not wait until the future?
Did I value the realization of my personal dream more than spending
my last two weeks with my community? What
needed to happen now?
The paradox comes in here. You
need to look to the future to shape the present, but if you only live in the
future, will you be constantly missing the life available at every moment
along the way. Right now, the boat is not completed, graduation
is a week away, and it will probably not get there before April 25, 2004. And I’m alright with that reality. I have made my decision, feel content about
where things are right now, and am still extremely excited about the future,
completing this project and setting sail.
Complexity:
Relationships of Complementarity
I have discussed various lessons in dealing with paradoxical ideas
that I have encountered throughout my journey with the sailboat. I have come to understand the infinite value
of each contradicting idea and have struggled to discover their correct relationships. When looking at risk and reward, control and
freedom, individuality and community, the present and the future, do I try
to balance these conflicting ideas, or to I strive to accept complementarity
within paradox, to fully experience both simultaneously?
When balancing two ideas, it is required to partially give one up for
the sake of the other’s integrity. Balance
assumes that it is logically impossible to completely have both conflicting
concepts simultaneously. It requires
finding the “land between” and settling into the determined appropriate value
of each idea so their combination creates an essential wholeness that the
mind can accept and achieve. Within
balance, the relative fractions of these ideas can shift according to the
needs of the balancer, as the pendulum swings along a mixed continuum, from
one extreme to the other.
When two ideas are paradoxical in nature, a resolution can also be
found through complementarity. This
term is rooted in Niels Bohr’s experiments with the particle-wave duality
of light, and has been extended into philosophical and theological applications,
such as the divine and human nature of Christ.
For example, a photon behaves as a particle under certain experimental
circumstances, and as a wave under others.
Light is not half wave and half particle, its integrity requires both
at all times, but can only be seen as one or the other depending on the perspective
of the observer.
The
acceptance that light can be both particle and wave simultaneously transcends
the rationality of the human mind, as the pursuit of holding two opposing
ideas within the same thought is an idealistic impossibility.
Yet the importance of accepting logical inconsistencies is essential
to understanding the true nature of the world.
The presence of complementarity in the paradoxes of the physical world
allows its application to be extended to other paradoxical thoughts if each
complement is honestly verified.
The
inherent mystery in the presence of natural and applied paradoxes drives my
curiosity to seek resolutions to what I cannot understand.
The very fact that relationships exist that transcend my rational understanding
is a source of both struggle and hope in my life. The discomfort of being unable to completely
resolve paradoxes and an unwillingness to even partially compromise a single
complement motivates my struggle, and from this wrestling, learning, continual
realization, and hope are born.
These
two ways of dealing with paradox cause me to ask another question: What is
the relationship between balance and complementarity?
Which defines its relationship with the other?
I realize the importance of both, knowing that I am driven by the complementarity
view, but I need the restful wholeness in balance.
The
central question is: In my mental wrestling am I willing to give up even the
slightest pursuit of an ideal for temporary rest?
Am I willing to give into the fact that I can’t cognitively grasp both
paradoxical components (balance and the complementarity) at the same time?
Is
the kenosis (humility) that
Christ demonstrated through his life and death the character that saves the
world? Or as James
Allen stated, are the solitary dreamers the saviors of the world by pursuing
impossible goals? Or perhaps … is it through dreaming that we
realize our own paradoxes, our need to go into ourselves, our need to struggle
with our understanding, and through our found humility we become like Christ,
saviors of the world?
“Conclusions”
I
haven’t found the answers to all of the questions, and because of that fact,
I can still continue on the journey. If I would conclude this project with a definite
closure, my greatest fear is that the learning that has occurred would be
forever isolated with its future application. The sailboat will be completed in due time,
and then the rest of the exploration will begin. I will have realized a dream that offers freedom
to explore the ends of the earth, and I will have served as a humble creator
that has breathed life, complexity, and opportunity into a new entity.
Life
behaves in cycles, the learning process continues to re-teach its lessons,
and new dreams emerge. Each vision uncovers beautiful complexity, driven
by a centripetal force of internal paradox, and then expands back out with
centrifugal force to create new experiences that inspire grander dreams. The cyclic nature of my journey into depth and
back out again reminds me that the learning in a journey is never finished;
it continues spiraling into time and beyond.
And as C.S. Lewis vividly describes
in The Last Battle, the focus of our motivation is always deeper, exploring
a heavenly reflected world that is like an onion, with rings increasingly
becoming larger as you approach its core with growing momentum, accelerating
further up and further in, into the beginning of the real story.