It’s been a busy few days since I got to
Port McNeill. The boat is more or less shovelled out and dry; the weather here
has been utterly gorgeous, which breaks my heart even more that my cowardly
companions turned tail and ran so easily. We would be in Tofino by now!

Interestingly, watching the west coast
weather, it refuses to do anything from the northwest; westerlies, light air,
and strong southerlies rising to gales. I guess you really do need that
summertime California high to get those strong northwest winds.

A Victoria neighbour showed up
yesterday.  The tall ship Maple
Leaf pulled in on my dock and there are barely a few centimetres separating her
bowsprit (as big around as Feinleog’s mast) from my headstay. They got caught
in the same storm as we did in a poor location near Gill Island (infamous for
the sinking of the Queen of the North). That’s fjord country so anchoring was
poor, and they also dragged a number of times.

So far I have the cockpit canvas
re-waterproofed, everything hauled out and dried in the sun, two massive loads
of laundry, the macerator pump rewired to 4 gauge cables (instead of the low
power cabin lighting circuit) and new switch installed. Tracy could come aboard
now and not have a clue what we went through. I also found that nasty leak that
appeared right above poor Eric’s berth. It was a portlight. I had suspected
that unit and was sure glad it wasn’t the genoa track after all, which would
have meant rebedding dozens of hard to reach bolts.

In fact, I had tried to seal the portlight
during the storm, but the two tubes of SIKA I had bought from Trotac Marine
were two years past their expiry date and had congealed in their tubes. Who
knew that you had to watch for expiry dates when buying caulking? That was an
expensive lesson and a word to everyone to check dates on these tubes before
you buy.

My son Stuart is arriving tomorrow and non
too soon. I’ve been glad for the time to get things squared away aboard, but
it’s lonely in a town this size with utterly nothing to do in your spare time
when you don’t know anyone. And the simple fact is I like to keep moving when
cruising, rather than poke about. I make a lousy tourist. Maybe I’ll take off
and do some fishing tomorrow.

I seriously considered turning around and
making another stab at the west coast, and I’m not sure why I didn’t. I guess
partially because I’ve already put Tracy through a lot of stress, she’s
expecting me home in a week or so, and partially because when I decide on a
path I tend to stick with it. And I had made my choice when it looked like we
would be stuck in Klaskish Inlet for 4 days. This goddamn weather sure makes me
feel like a dupe though.

I had an interesting chat with a friend
today, about the role of fear in our lives. I suggested that fear is the
primary determinant of a person’s life past, for those we consider successes to
those we consider failures. It just manifests differently, and applied to
different things, accounting for the various outcomes we see.

I raised the question of how do we overcome
this power that fear – which so often is unconscious –has in our lives. As a
culture we honour courage, but courage only goes so far. Sooner or later fear
will win over, especially when they are the kind of pervasive, unconscious
fears that steers us through life, like fear of our sexual impulses or fear of
the unknown. Which is why even the most outwardly brave individual when closely
examined, will reveal all kinds of hidden fears, like fear of commitment,
failure, and so forth.

When I think of how some rare individuals
seem to have conquered fear, most often it is through detachment. Through a
process of rigorous spiritual training, they don’t fear much in the world,
because in a way they no longer exist in it. Physically yes, but their hearts
and minds are tuned into another reality and view the earthly one as a veil.

Great if you can pull that one off I guess,
but for me it’s insufficient. I’ve often felt a strong conflict between these
two forms of perception; the more spiritually I focus, the more life in the
present dims somehow. Yet the more firmly I am grounded in the physical moment,
the further spiritual peace seems to be. I guess I’m not ready to renounce
passion just yet.

So what then, just keep pushing past fears?
Is the simply the human condition and best to just get on with it? That’s been
my modus operandi for a long time, and I can say without qualification that as
a strategy it has severe limits.

But then I started thinking about fears –
limiting fears, fears not based on reality but flawed perceptions. I believe
that by far the majority of these develop with the person at a very young age
and are firmly rooted in the personality. This makes them both very intractable
but also very guides for what we should be afraid of in our adult lives. If I have
a fear of rejection (I do), how will that effect my ability to form intimate
relationships? The fear isn’t based on whether I am objectively likeable, but a
whole host of anxieties around acceptability, loveability, and personal value,
none of which has anything to do with another person’s subjective experience of
me (which, like as not, is based on their own subset of relationship fears and
anxieties).

So what to do? Cognitive behavioural
counselling can help but it’s expensive and most people only go that route when
they realise their fears are grossly damaging their lives, rather than simply
limiting them.

I have a suggestion, and I’m working very
hard to try it out. Psychologists know that the basing of self-limiting fears
are long held assumptions about reality. Beliefs formed when we were very
young. Beliefs and thoughts are inseparable, hence the cognitive-behaviourist’s
attempts at changing the distorted thoughts to more objective ones.

But if the problems are the thoughts, why
not stop it at the thoughts, period. Buddhists teach us about the dangers of
the untrained wandering mind – monkey mind they call it, evoking the image of a
babbling of monkeys wildly chattering in the trees. Peace comes when we quiet
the mind and all its crazy and wild flights.

Turning the noggin off when meditating is
of course a good thing, but what about during everyday life. And I don’t mean
through meditating but when walking the street, talking to someone, or taking a
dump.

Since it’s our flawed beliefs (thoughts)
that run constantly through our mind that directs us through our lives, imagine
if there were no thoughts? No assumptions about anything. No judgments, no
beliefs, nothing. Not trying to change negative thoughts to positive one’s but
turning them off all together and carry on and see what happens?

For someone like me that’s a very difficult
thing to do. I’m always thinking, pondering, musing, deciding, judging and
making conclusions as I go about whatever it is that I’m doing. I’m certain
that most of my perceptions are at least distorted if not outright false, so
what’s the harm in just shutting it all off and try to re-experience things
with a blank slate and see what comes up.

Like I said it’s hard. It’s hard to know
how to move through your day or know what to do without one’s assumptions of
reality. But what I’ve found when I’ve been able to do it, is that curiosity
takes over. I approach things open and wait to see what unfolds. Most of the
time it’s different than my assumptions would suggest. The body still reacts –
in a situation where I would typically be anxious, the gut still tightens and
the breathing changes – but I simply watch that bodily response with the same
curiosity. If I don’t think/judge/make conclusions about what it all means, and
what my response means, it doesn’t matter. It just is.

I think I’m onto something here.