Motivation from Anna and Louisa

It’s still early days I thought, but being mid-Atlantic I had already covered three thousand nautical miles in 22 days of sailing. I am still moving, slowly but gradually logging the 1,500 more miles that will take me to the Caribbean. Beyond that, how long I will sail and how long linger, I do not know.

Before my departure, Anna and Louisa gave me a box of some ten letters they had written, each addressed to different times in the future (Open on Your Departure, For When You’ve Completed Your Atlantic Crossing, Open on Day 100, Open When You Need a Little Push…). In the Departure letters, Louisa said “I’m sure you’ll learn a lot about the world – and yourself too… Know that I’ll be thinking of you every step of the way”.

Anna quoted Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, a favourite of ours: 

“ Then he descended the steps of the temple and all the people followed him. And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck. And facing the people again, he raised his voice and said: People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you. Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go. We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.”

She urged that I should “always remain tenacious… we are all so proud of how you are seizing life. Never change and enjoy the richness it has to offer to the full”.

With such sentiments am I borne forward.