At one point he just laid in the bottom of the boat staring up at the big white clouds passing as he moved at a drifting pace across the big water. It seemed that since he could no longer see the shoreline in any direction over the rail of the boat, he might as well just look up and forget about a shoreline. What if there was no shoreline.
Once you relinquish control, and let the wind just take you across the lake, certainly giving up visual conformation anyway, you actually move along a continuum from the desire to peek over the bow, to fear of banging into the rocks on the distant shore, and eventually settle into a state of complete acceptance.
He allows himself this experience once a year, but often wonders what it would feel like if the body of water was even larger. The ocean perhaps. How would he handle the aimlessness, the uncertainty, the mental freedom, the boredom, and the fear?
We cling understandably to the certainty of our lives. We make many conscious choices to put ourselves into a life that we can comfortably predict and plan current and future steps. Like stumbling onto a burning bush, we no more want to encounter things that do not fall into categories that we have labeled, chosen, and understand. This is what our development of the intellect has taught us- we can control our lives.
As he had fallen asleep in the setting sun of the early evening, he was startled awake. Err….what the…bam…..he had run aground on the rocks, and the water was lapping against the aluminum boat. Things don’t go on forever, or do they?
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