On January 8th I set sail from La Paz, on the Baja California peninsula of Pacific Mexico for Long Island, NY on a multi-leg voyage. I provide a synopsis of “The Voyage” in my sailing blog, Sailing Intermezzo and provide regular progress updates while sailing there. That blog describes the what, where, when and how of The Voyage. I barely touch on the why.
I’m making this voyage to learn more about just being. Yes, The Voyage has a plan, with destinations and a schedule and an symbolic ending point. It takes planning, preparation and determination to sail safely and successfully reach the next port. And yes, I celebrate arriving there.
I know how to set goals and achieve them. I learned how to do that as a young man and got really good at it as I matured and became more skilled and experienced. What I didn’t learn much of was how to appreciate the experience of doing something while doing it. My eyes were always on the prize at the end. The process of getting to the prize went by as a blur, actions that needed to be done but not really experienced, then mostly forgotten.
Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist who won a Nobel prize for his pioneering work in behavioral economics. In his book, “Thinking Fast and Slow”, he writes about two selves, the experiencing self and the remembering self. The experiencing self is the one that does the living. The remembering self is the one that keeps score and makes choices. Kahneman asks the question, “Which self should count?” and through psychological experiments concludes that relying on the remembering self often results in poor choices and skewed perspectives. He then looks at the question more philosophically and makes what I find to be a touching, humble personal admission, “Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”
For most of my life, my experiencing self has been a stranger to me, too. Since initially starting my voyage in October 2015, I have gotten to know it better, though. It has required me to become aware of and allow myself access to a different state of consciousness than my normal thinking, remembering self.
I find the self-contained compactness of my boat, floating on the always moving sea, in ever-changing weather, though the cycles of day and night, to be the perfect environment for connecting with my experiencing self. Life at sea moves slowly. My remembering self gets bored and sleeps a lot. My experiencing self quietly marvels at the constantly changing, infinite details of sea and sky, as I keep the boat moving along. The experiencing self just lets the mind and body be. I have known no more peaceful and content a state than this.
My voyage is similar to the practice of meditation or yoga, a way to expand awareness, learn good habits, be healthy, accept what is, and truly appreciate life.
I’m not the first sailor to have discovered the philosophical and spiritual nature of a voyage. To quote he famous single-hander, Bernard Moitessier, ““When a great adventure is launched with a powerful thrust, fatigue in the muscles and doubts in the mind are swept away by a fullness that moves life along like a breath from the depths of the soul.”