Spread your sails

I don’t know much about sailing, but since moving to a small fishermen’s town a couple of years ago, I find myself surrounded by people of the sea.  Fishermen and yachtsmen and powerboaters and swimmers and sailors and the odd canoeist.  And each one of them has a story or two to tell!

Despite my overwhelmingly boring existence of over forty years, I have always fancied myself quite an adventurous spirit.

As a child, my two big dreams were always to become a fighter pilot and to become a game ranger.  Yeah, sailing did not feature there.  Because I did not grow up next to the ocean, or next to any kind of water, not even next to a swimming pool.  To be honest, I never even learnt to swim.

Gosh, my parents never left the house. Not even on a weekend or during annual leave, unless it was to go grocery shopping, or to visit my grandparents once every two years on a cross-country trip.

So no, I never even knew anything about sailing or canoeing or fishing, or even swimming. The fact that we were chronically penniless certainly did not make things any easier.

My parents always had this attitude of not being good enough. You know:  the good things in life were for other people, not for us.  We were destined to grovel in poverty, never going anywhere, never learning anything about life or the glorious planet we live on, never experiencing anything, and never even meeting let alone chatting to or learning from other, perhaps more interesting, people. 

We never really needed anything. We were well fed, had a television, and always slept warm in a clean and good house in a middle to lower-class neighbourhood with neat paint and a lush green garden. My dad had a car that he looked after well – albeit that it was about 15 years old when he finally managed to buy himself a new one – and my mother made sure our house was neater than any other house I have ever seen in my life. We could quite literally eat off the floors – no exaggeration. There was never a single dirty spot anywhere, every windowsill and skirting board was spotless, and every paint line was perfectly straight.  We painted the house ourselves. Even as small children, we each had a role to play.  So it wasn’t like we were dirty, poverty-stricken, charity cases.  We had just enough to live without too much worry, but just too little to enjoy life to its fullest.

And as children, we never knew any better.

It wasn’t the money that was ever a problem. Not that I would suggest that we had problems, or that I would ever blame my parents for anything – they are good people who did the best they knew.  I just became more and more aware of how the way I grew up imprinted on me a certain way of thinking about myself and my capabilities, my lack of entitlement, my inability to ever ask for help, my fierce independence, my lack of financial acumen, my deep-seated believe that I am not good enough.  I learnt a long time ago that dreams are just that: dreams.  They belong in the realm of fantasy.  And I was too afraid to ever admit that I even had any dreams.  I was afraid of not being appreciative of what we had.  To be fair though, apart from the things I saw on television (and that was rather limited) I did not know enough about the world to really have proper dreams.  You cannot dream about things you have never seen or experienced.

Like sailing. I can’t remember whether I had ever seen a yacht before I was well into adulthood. Or a kayak, for that matter.  I don’t think I ever knew about such a thing as diving and I certainly had no clue how snorkelling worked.  I couldn’t swim, so even if I did see someone snorkelling, I would never have tried to find out more.  I did not believe that I was entitled or able to know more about anything that did not exist within my direct field of reference. i.e. my home.  With all its many limitations.

As children, we do not learn by what our parents tell us. We learn by the example they set us.

And my parents, via their example, taught me from an early age that I was not good enough. That I did not know enough. That I would forever be too poor. That there was no excitement to life, no real joy to be found in life. That life was about going to work doing a meaningless job that I dislike, bringing home a paycheck that had to be stretched to the limit, and about keeping to your lane, never complaining, never looking for more, never expecting anything, and never amounting to anything more. Because being more was not for us – it was for other people, and for us to look at but never to touch or understand or crave or work towards.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but that was what I believed with my innocent childish heart. It is one of those things that wealthy people do not understand about the poor:  the main reason why most of them never amount to anything more than their parents did is because they learn how to live from their parents. Just like religion, it is not something that passes through the gates of reason before it takes hold of a person. It is ingrained into the core of a person’s existence long before the ability to reason even commences.

My parents never took any chances and so I learnt to stay in my lane and keep quiet. My parents never had much of an opinion on anything, and so I never learnt how to share my opinion with tact and grace. Instead, I slowly boiled up into a silent rebellion inside myself.  Somewhere inside I always knew that I was destined for more. That I had more in me. But I had no idea how to live to that ideal.  I suppressed the will to break free with all my might.  And I still do. Despite having since learnt that there was always more to me and I was always entitled to more, I still have not outgrown the instinct to suppress. My self-esteem never recovered.

When I told my mother that I wanted to be a fighter pilot, no part of her believed me. It was just a silly child talking. When I told my mother that I wanted to become an exchange student, she did not believe me either.  When it was time to choose a field of study and I told her I wanted to become a game ranger, I did not even take myself seriously because I knew that such a “mediocre” thing was not good enough – I had to become a professional.  When I told her that I was interested in medicine or veterinary science, she brushed it off. Whilst she was determined that I should have some sort of status as an adult, veterinary science or medicine was one of those things destined for others, not for me.  Besides, how would I ever pay for it?  We could not possibly do what other people do and make a plan…

So there was never any encouragement. Never any belief that I could achieve anything. I was destined to do what others wanted me to do and live a boring life of going to work, doing a thankless job I did not enjoy, and coming home to pay the bills. Those bills ended up being much higher than they should have been.  Because when a child grows up in a life of nothing, never being made to feel like they are worthy of anything, never being made to believe that they have the ability to achieve anything, never being given the freedom to be who they really want to be and express themselves freely, that child turns to materialistic things to establish some level of acceptance – both for others to accept him/her and for him/her to accept themselves. They know they are worth more, so they try to buy an image of more instead of pursuing the things that are buried deep within their souls and suppressed by a lack of support.

So I never knew anything about sailing, or fishing, or canoeing, or swimming.  Those were things outside our direct field of reference. Things others did, not us.

There are a lot of things I never knew anything about.  It wasn’t until I was deep into my thirties that I first discovered that there are people who sail yachts across oceans to deliver them from one place to another.  Who would have thought that one can sail without owning your own, expensive yacht?!

And then, a couple of years ago, I finally had an opportunity to get behind the helm of a yacht and keep the mainsail from luffing as we heeled to port side with spray across the deck. I took to it like a duck to water! I will never forget what it felt like to have the wind in my hair and salty spray on my face as we surged forward with the smell of whale somewhere close by.

How could I have never experienced this before? Why was I so sheltered, kept away from life itself, for so many years?

The adventurous spirit locked away can soon become the broken spirit.

I like to think that my spirit is far from broken.

But my belief in myself and my ability to achieve the things that make me feel alive still lacks.

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