Zen Sailor-The Mindful Mariner ⚓

⚓ Zen Sailor ⚓

Navigating Life's Waters with Maritime Wisdom

"Fear is for folks who don't get out much"

"Instant Gratification Takes Too Long. It took me 20 years to become an overnight success"

After spending 8 months a year for the last 10 years living out of a suitcase, it is easy to reflect on the value of thoughtful travel. I call it "Taking Yourself With You". There is no such thing as work-life-vacation balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

Travel, at its best is creative destruction. In the wisdom of the moment, the power of a new language, food and culture and people are not problems to be solved but mysteries to be lived.

The whole exercise has to be one of reconciliation. Lowering, removing or shattering the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate we human beings, one from another.

🌊 The Hunt For Happy - is the longing for repetition

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling our stories from the same facts. Pleasure is not happiness but the joy I have extracted from trips depends more on the mindset I travel with than on the destination I travel to.

My daughter Truddie recently came back from SE Asia. Don't follow my advice I told her. Follow my example. I am glad she is doing just that. Already booked another trip with her husband Joe in May for elsewhere.

My dream—I haven't been everywhere, but it is on my list, reveals I never quite get 'over' this travel-thing: it's all still in there somewhere. People make my experience vital—That's the mark of a good trip.

I never heard a travel agent ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we want to go. Instead of bringing back 3000 refrigerator magnets, I return from my trips with a collection of small but life-enhancing thoughts.

The difference between me and this Ferrari is that I know I am not a Ferrari. "Stuff" is an identity crisis. We are not our Stuff.

⚓ Empathy and Sympathy - A Big Distinction

FADE IN: Empathy: I see someone zoom past me in a tricked out Ferrari today—He is not greedy or flashy but "incredibly vulnerable and in need of love" I know because I drove one in Monaco. I was that guy.

At home we don't usually encounter our true and best selves.

The Things You Own End Up Owning You—but beds last longer than marriages

For instance, Sympathy: I see bitterness, the silent disease (mostly) of domestic relationships take its toll—the habits and confinement of the ordinary, commuter world. That resignation is like a spot on your shirt that never comes out—So Don't just change your mind, change your shirt.

Rule of thumb is if I am not embarrassed enough by who I was and what I did last year, I probably am not learning enough!

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🧭 Nostalgia - Pedaling Thoughts

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

In Copenhagen, I went for a bike ride in the center of the city. In one street lined with uniform apartment buildings, I stopped by a yellow building and felt an intense longing to spend the rest of my life there.

Born in NY, Neurons that fire together wire together. Considering how much inner "nomad" is in each of us, in adulthood I gave myself permission to LEAVE ASAP, and imaginatively re-create(d) my ID in line with my true allegiances of a place noted for second chances, Venice Beach, California...

My vibe would create my tribe.

🌊 Sea Change - Life's Great Teacher

MY LIFE, BASED ON A TRUE STORY is downright paranormal. How the hell did I get here? Whatever talent I possess(ed) is on loan from some deity, some unimaginable source and force for some exquisite portion of time, to be passed on when I am finished.

Fear is for folks who don't get out very much. Outdoors Is In!

"When you define me, you negate me"—so let me tell my own idiosyncratic story. My autobiography gives dignity and meaning to me and the YOUniverse.

🚢 Life's Change Agent

When I started blogging about my own experiences at sea, I started to answer the question—What is the meaning of life? I Got One! Find What You Love And Let It Kill You. I'm not a renaissance man. I'm a Renaissance, man!

"There are three sorts of people; those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea."

⛵ Those Who Do Not Move, Do Not Notice Their Chains

The ethos of mobility and individualism started when I become an idiot (a Greek word originally meaning non-citizen), not buying into the shared hallucination of mediocrity. What is deeply personal becomes universal—this is the real internet and network—the collective unconsciousness.

The Earth school kills all of its students—It only ends once, everything else is just progress. Hopefully, you do things that get you out of your "jumping jack" default state of being and go to the edges and profoundly do your human homework.

🌊 The Invention Of The Ship Was Also The Invention Of The Shipwreck

The word "blessing" actually comes from the French blessure, which means "wound." So, a blessing always has that other side to it. My cruising obsession is like a private religion. It's where the bulk of my spirit is actually invested.

If I wanted to be a multinational soul, I needed to get consecrated by sailing on the oceans. It's a wonderful thing to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don't know anyone; where, as Melville said, "God's one and only voice is Silence."

🧭 The Zen of Salt Water

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean."

6 Laps Around The World DOES Build Confidence, ie, trusting yourself, only then can you begin to live.

The whole secret is to have NO FEAR. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea. The sea is the place I house my soul and access my higher self.

Freedom is what you do to what has been done to you by your own thoughts, words and actions.
— Jean Paul Sartre (with personal interpretation)

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