If I Only Knew Then…
When I’m sitting at the helm, on a journey toward some destination still hours away, I find it a special time to think about things. Upcoming stories, boat projects on Growler, how to word a complex topic in need of simplification, even what I plan for dinner.
It is a very fertile environment for me, once I am free of inner harbors, last-minute preparations, and office phone messages.
For some reason, being a passenger aboard an airliner is never as productive, even though I’m a mere bump on a log, with no responsibility whatsoever, in charge of nothing.
On a recent trip up the coast, I turned on an FM radio to hear from the world outside my view. I sat alone at the helm of the trawler, the rest of the crew attending to their own needs. In other words, they napped.
A radio station was really in the groove, playing choice oldies from the 60’s. The tunes were familiar, if not very recent: Beach Boys, Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Beatles, Moody Blues…
As I listened to this blast from the past over the airwaves, I thought about hose much energy I’ve consumed since those days, how many turns my life has taken since being in high school during the 60’s.
As important as life’s events seemed back then, they pale in comparison to everything that has come since. Perched on the comfy Stidd chair, I recalled with parent-child wonder at the innocence of the days of that youth.
Dialing some autopilot adjustment to avoid an approaching tug with tow some distance away, I chuckled at my teenage seriousness in all things unimportant, and my distinct lack of interest in that which was. my mind recalled in vivid detail the events and emotions that shaped my high school days.
The diesels beat a steady rhythm as my heart eventually warmed at the tender recollection of an incurable crush on JL, a girl held so high in my young mind she was a goddess of eternal proportions.
And I thought, if only I knew then what I know now…
Think of the possibilities. To avoid those circular patterns of silliness that led nowhere fast. To make informed career and life decisions early on, as if some teen prodigy on a direct path to bliss.
Oh, were that only the case…
As the tug passed by, a long cable stretched aft several hundred yards to the barge, its broad bow seeming to boil the ocean as it sheered wave after wave in steady progress onward, I had an epiphany.
When I measure the time between those days and now, and project the same number of years into the future, I might just possibly have the same number of years left in my life as I’ve lived since high school.
I sat up straight in the helm chair as the delicious impact of that hit me. Rather than reminisce about how things might have been, wishing to go back over three decades to a youthful innocence, yet armed with adult experience and confidence, why not seize the moment and put a line in the sand? Right here, right now.
Why not apply that thought to each day moving forward? I know now what I know now.
I’ve met many people who plan early retirement to go cruising. They view themselves in the waning years, their life more or less done in terms of accomplishments, busy schedules, and “productive” years.
I know now what I know now. With all that I now know, can’t I seize the opportunity, not as a teen, but as someone with lots of experience and reason to use it moving ahead?
To explore, challenge and change. To make a difference.
I know couples who have done just that. They return to paradise year after year, yet instead of just chilling out on extended vacation, they get involved in the community, teach children, build libraries and schools and help wherever they can. It’s as if they’d been given a chance to look back in their final days and wished they’d done more—then gone back and done just that.
These men and women find satisfaction and purpose in each day, even though they’re retired and “gone cruising.”
How might I direct my life differently if I knew then what I know now—and then is now?
I suddenly stepped out of the gray helm chair to stand at the wheel. Scanning the horizon and instruments for the umpteenth time in so many minutes, I reached over and switched off the autopilot. The boat was free once more.
I took the helm.
JL would be proud.
Bill Parlatore
Editor-In-Chief