Yes, it’s been two months since my last post to my blog. Why? What happened?
Life. To paraphrase Viktor Frankl, from his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, life expected something of me and it was my “responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
I spent the rest of February after my birthday on the 22nd in La Paz making friends and living a pretty lazy, solitary life on my boat. It was a time of introspection and contemplation. I asked myself a lot of tough questions. Simple answers revealed themselves to me, answers that didn’t tell me what to do but, rather, pointed me in certain directions.
I spent most of March working on a business consulting project and getting a rental property ready for new tenants. It was a busy time, as well as an emotional one as relationships took their course. As Kahil Gibran writes in “The Prophet”,
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
I was back in La Paz and on the boat by the end of March and have spent the time since alternating between sailing sojourns to nearby Isla Espiritu Santos and trying to be productive with business matters, writing and boat chores in the marina.
Until recently, the curse of laziness has plagued me. But now I find myself building up energy and becoming increasingly purposeful and productive. I’ve started writing a non-fiction business book, am steadily knocking out boat projects, and an exciting idea for resuming my curtailed sailing voyage is starting take form.
It feels good. I’m feeling content in a way I haven’t felt for a long time. And how I arrived at this state of being wasn’t by plan or doing. It was by allowing things to be as they are, allowing them to unfold as they do, and following the advice of a Quaker proverb to “proceed as the way opens.”