Two becomes three

The fourth urge: occasionally discussed, seldom considered.

Let’s continue this little numbers game and turn the focus now to the question of time. We had a plan initially: spend from the savings pot for two years of comfortable minimalism and sail an unspecified loop through the great unknown. The thing about the unknown though is once you know it, your perspective changes. You learn about the rhythms of the Earth’s bands of forgiving weather, and you discern the difference between life inside that ray of light and the punishment that waits beyond its ragged edges. If you are lucky enough to have a partner who couldn’t stop working to save her life, you might also find that you didn’t lose as much of that precious green blood as you’d expected (though still always more than you hope). A person in such a fortunate situation might be forgiven for looking around him or herself in a beautiful and protected place and think, “What’s the rush?”

Of course, you feel competing urges. One tells you to revel, explore, seek out novelty, discomfort, and adventure! It compels you to read cruising guides of untrodden places: the Darien jungle Wild West, Ecuador one rung further away from the tourism machine, the other world across a month at sea. That drive has been animating us for quite a while, but we aren’t sure we can keep it up indefinitely, certainly not right now with the shape our life has formed into in this crucible experience.

A second urge has risen slowly, an undercurrent of need to experience the community of a single place and make your mark, to do what good you can while you have the luxury of time to do so. To focus on living from a boat instead of traveling by boat and free ourselves from living in thrall to the traveling machine’s need for upkeep and repair. “There’s still free time to be found,” a voice says seductively in your ear as you replace an old busted fuel line, “Stop moving and see what you’ve been missing.” You consider the voice, its promise, and hope that it is not a trap. You’ve seen others swallow the hook and slowly grow daunted by the thought of returning to the treacherous sea. If you stop, will you be able to start again?

A third urge bubbles up unbidden, “Turn around and go home! Be back within the year! See your people! Don’t make your Mother cry! Start your real life again!” The third urge wants you to be back where your future waits, but if we’re honest with ourselves we know we don’t have it in us to go back even faster than we came. And hey, you reason: we just got here! It would be a shame to leave now and miss the thing you didn’t know you came for.

There are practicalities to consider. There’s the risk of coming home without a large enough safety net. There’s the uncertainty of jobs, and a need for actually affordable health care in the near future. Then there’s the big fat uncertainty that is the boat itself: what expensive and complicated (not to mention dangerous) breakdown waits around the corner? Will we survive another year of this lifestyle? Some days you just want to exit the laboratory and drive a fast car straight to a comfortable couch. There’s a potential for work and volunteer opportunities here that would reduce those risks, and there are enough people here to build the support network we would need if we decided to stay an extra year. We can rent a car if we really need to drive, and for providing comfort, a hammock is no slouch. A year in Panama could work.

And so one by one our objections are whittled down and our projected future is filled anew with hope, and two years become three. Life is longer than we sometimes give it credit for. Our thirties will no doubt test this hypothesis when we survey the landscape upon our return home and finally gauge how far we are behind. Will we hustle to catch up, or are we already on a different path? Time will tell.

Until that time, we’ll live cautiously hopeful in the palm of fate. The big changes are always a surprise when they come, but in a way, we’ve been preparing for this all along.