Another day in paradise…I suppose that’s what we should say. But paradise is what you make it and where you find it.
Life ship-side is hard. I try to make no secret of that while at the same time trying not to sound like I’m begrudging what really is one of the best jobs in the world. I love my job, nothing ever really changes that.
The truth remains though that this isn’t an ‘easy’ life, anymore than life shore-side is ‘easy’. The hours are long, the work is hard, and often times the work is lonely. My closest friends are scattered to the four corners of the globe, and my family back home goes through a great deal of stress that I am rarely (if ever) there to assist with. One of the things about this life that’s odd, is that we are consistently trying to find the balance between maintaining our ties to home, and keeping the channels open, while still separating ourselves from home enough that the pain of not being physically ‘there’ for things like birthdays, graduations, weddings and funerals, of being unable to be present for things we cannot change – can cause us. We are part of two lives at once, while sometimes feeling that we are part of neither. One life is a shadow of the other, and you can’t survive one without having the other to fall back on.
We develop very distinct, and sometimes harsh and unwanted, survival mechanisms.
They often do a very good job of breaking our hearts at the same time as they prevent such things. Hearts can, after all, break in different ways.
My point in all this is not to elaborate the negative aspects of what really is a wonderful life. It’s not that at all.
My point is that, because ship-life is what it is and because things here are so fleeting, we learn to find joy where we can capture it, happiness when we can grasp it, and peace where we can make it. We learn to appreciate the little things: the sparkle of the water under a full moon, the lush green velvet of the trees that we can see from the aft deck on a day like today, the smell of the salt that hangs perpetually in the air when we walk on deck 9 in the evenings, the clasp of a good friend’s hand on a hard day, the smile of a loved one sent from miles away, the taste of chocolate ice cream as you walk across the Lido deck in the baking Indonesian heat.
We all have our escape mechanisms.
For me – ever since that day in Israel last year – when I am too tired to sleep, when my eyes are too gritty to focus on an embroidery chart, and my brain won’t settle enough for me to escape into a book, I usually find myself on the basketball court.
Thump thump….swish….rattle…
People sometimes see me up there, and ask how on earth I can play when it’s so hot out that those few passengers who have remained on board are usually fanning themselves in the air conditioned confines of their cabins. I’m not quite sure, somehow I just do it. Probably because I need to. I never play with anyone else, I only set foot on the court when it’s vacant, and I rarely stay more than 20 minutes, by which time the heat has plastered my bangs to my forehead and I’m dying for glass of something with ice in it. I know when I’m finished; I know when I’ve had enough. But for me there’s something therapeutic about basketball, something that calms me down, I don’t have to focus on creating anything, on besting anyone, on impressing anyone. It doesn’t matter if I make the basket or not after all.
Because of my own personal associations…it also serves to remind me, that…well ‘with one turning along the way, I would be elsewhere, I would be different…’
We all need to be reminded of that sometimes, to be reminded to look at who we are, and what brought us here, and how incredible a journey that really is.
As I say, we all have our escape mechanisms.
52 more days to go….