Casual yet topnotch cuisine on a sunny afternoon at St. Martin's Grand Case waterfront. However, New Year's eve we hunkered aboard, while storm waves violently lashed the shoreside hotels. Today, the area is still rebuilding from hurricane Irma.
Ruminating Our "Now"
We arrived back in Portland Oregon seven months ago. We are incredibly grateful for the many who've helped us out... our families, friends, employers.... Though we still live on a boat (an amazing story, how that came about), we've not moved it more than 12 miles since late July. In a sense we've become "dirt dwellers," with full-time jobs, a car and an address. We are still here, yet still feel "uncommitted."
While we've never been more electronically connected, so often we are more distant than ever from those as sometimes as close as a few feet away.
"What percent of the time do your customers eat and interact with their cell phone, tablet or laptop, rather than talk to each other, or you?" I asked our waitress at the restaurant by the laundromat we usually use. Most interact more with their devices than each other, she told us. It's what we expected, a habit we've noticed seems more the exception than the rule these days wherever people congregate, whether in private or in public, even in more socially interactive settings.
Even (especially?) in our own lives, for months now we've worked alternate hours and days. Our time to connect when we're together and awake can be calculated in minutes per week.
Then there's "virtual friends." When does a friend become "just a Facebook friend?" When we no longer see them, don't know when and don't care. When it appears something big is happening in their life, and we don't even pick up the phone (or even private message or text) to ask what's going on. In our heart of hearts, we know they would love a person-to-person, real-time, private conversation, an arm around their shoulder, a shoulder to cry on, a hug, and we don't offer it.
Does this distance add to the divisiveness and intolerance we've seen?
Perhaps. As we make choices for friends (and more and more, "e-friends" and "groups"), news and entertainment, our scope narrows. We effortlessly find ourselves aligned with others who tend to believe what we believe, support our version of the truth. The "us" versus "them" becomes more entrenched.
Something's gotta give. And that something is the need for a deeper, more understanding, more caring human connectedness. It's time to build bridges, not walls.
Our One Resolution
We define ourselves by what we have done, what we are doing, and what we hope to do.
Yes, since May, these posts are more a throwback, a placeholder for "What Next." Lucky as we feel to achieved our "trip of a lifetime" goal -- 5 years travel by sailboat through 30 countries, 20,000 miles, halfway around the world -- our life is far from over.
Stuck as we feel at the moment, we know this is a transition period. We're not sure yet what will change, but rest assured, we will be in a different place well before this time next year, literally, figuratively or both. It will be place where we are once again more connected in a positive way, with each other and the world beyond us.
And You?
Are you living the life you want? If you're not, what are your plans to change it? As we start this new year, let's take this ride together, and make our lives, and the world we live in, a better place.
FYI
I will be presenting at the Seattle Boat Show January 29th and 30th. One presentation is on provisioning (and keeping gluten free in the process), another on lessons learned crossing the South Pacific and am also on Northwest Women in Boating's panel discussion. I'm also working on my first e-book, on what it takes to go cruising.
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