It's the last evening of the year as I write this, and I feel my mind is perhaps a bit of a mess. I feel psychologically, mentally emotionally beaten about, a tiny yacht on a vast, stormy sea. To go on, there are dual, necessary, but opposed needs.
Exhaustion helps no one, and to face the ocean worn and tired is to invite mistakes: the sea is a harsh mistress after all, and surely won't forgive. To this end, I heave-to, retreat inside and light the hearth. Outside the watery turmoil abates none, but from inside the cabin that's no concern of mine. Now far into this voyage, I turn to my habitual comforts to whittle away minutes, hours and days in the pursuit of trite dopamine hits from the eternal entertainment matrix. In the moment, there's a respite, an absence of exhaustion, of concern, of anxiety or worry, but an absence is all it is: there's no recovery or improvement.
As a smoker is relieved in the moment by a rush of nicotine, to dip into my own coping mechanisms is alluring, relieving, but ultimately futile. It's a pattern I should know: I smoked for years, and ultimately kicked it. To smoke from time to time isn't a failure - I've not resorted to the habit.
I steal away hours in the night, feeling that I'm clawing back my sense of self-evident existence, but come the morn I am where I already was, still at sea, without a horizon in sight. I know that which brings me joy and growth is that which I create, explore, learn and do anew. I know concurrently that mine habit this outcome will not provide: but I remain stuck in my own animal desires and complexes, unable to crack the cycle with any frustratingly logical analysis.
Every moment I spend warming myself in the cabin, buried under blankets and ignoring the maelstrom on the other side of the hull, is a moment I don't spend moving. I don't know that the voyage will ever end, that I may ever sight land on the horizon, but how sad it would be to be equipped with a sail and to sit still. I know that to push my own endurance, will and ability is a pursuit and goal in itself. To move, to be swift, to strike out for somewhere new is that which has brought me the greatest joy and meaning I've ever known.
The calculus is clear: go out into the storm. Go out into the wind and the rain and the dark and the cold and face it, travel and progress regardless. The hearth will always be there, but I will not.
