The Anchor
June 16th, 2014
Hello Friends,
If my lack of posts recently has been a concern to you, I want to assure you after sailing through a few storms, that journey is still on course and I am doing well. I had been in a weird funk recently, finding myself somewhere between anxious and apathetic, a restless I couldn’t shake. I felt like a school-child whose swinging his feet didn’t touch the ground and whose assigned work simply wasn’t captivating him.
Currently neither a student or an employee, the concept of not simply being defined by what I do had become itself strikingly apparent. And as the waves of life oscillated, the importance of a secure anchor revealed itself anew.
(Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Summer 2012)
I am an advocate of sailing in faith, strength, and confidence, but after captaining this journey for the last few months I’m convinced it is impossible to leave the safe harbor if you can’t secure your anchor. If you don’t have a place to turn when the storms of life get a little too strong, the great journeys simply aren’t going to happen.
These realizations of course don’t happen in the middle of the maelstrom, I’ll be first to tell you that. But keep your course straight and true, guide off a North Star and you might even end up in a better place than you could have imagined. For me that was this past weekend, or to be more specific a certain 24 hour time frame.
Thursday afternoon I had checked myself into Huntington Hospital as the surgery site where my port had been placed was opening up and leaking blood all over my chest. But a few deep breaths, a few stitches over a casual conversation with a surgeon, then I was on my way. It was as if the cosmos knew I needed this weekend.
For starters, the reunion with old friends has certain sweetness that grows like the strength of a quality Belgian brew in an oaken barrel. There’s something about special about friendships which endure the tests of time. You can go weeks and months without seeing them, yet you can sit and talk like no more than a minute had passed since your last exchange.
With the old also comes the new. The making of new friends whom you simply click with. You find yourself on the same wavelength. There is a sense of familiarity, but how could that be possible? You’ve just met. Then you realize that as you traverse the broadest stretches of open ocean, there are may actually be others out there like you. Few things are sweeter.
So this Friday marks the halfway point of chemotherapy, and while the storm will rage with nausea that would rival an experience rounding the Cape of Good Hope, I’m confident thing will be okay. Actually check that, more than okay, they’re going to be great. As I sail towards the sunset I’m not worried, my anchor is secure.
(St. George’s, Bermuda. Fall 2013)