To be truly challenging, a voyage, like life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise one is doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea --- "cruising," it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If one is contemplating a voyage and has the means, abandon the venture until fortunes change. Only then can one know what the sea is all about.
"I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it." What these people can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security." And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine --- and before we know it our lives are gone.
What does a person need-really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in --- and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all-in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry --- playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.
The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.
Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?
-- from Sterling Hayden's book Wanderer, pub. 1978
(yang, rubbing his bruise from the 'cruising' jab)
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