Last night I was on a boat. It was a Thursday night and I was on a boat with a random group of students. I am a student at Michigan State University and last night I was able to drive 2 hours to Muskegon with three other people that I have never met. We were all in the same Kinesology class, KIN 140, sailing the great lakes. Talk about being open to experiences.
When we arrived, we were greeted by our captain and professor, Captain Joe. He was itching to set sail, so right away we hoped out of the car and onto the sailboat, Catalina 34 was her name, and this was going to be our home for the night. We learned to sail all in a matter of about 15 minutes because according to Captain Joe that's all it takes. To sail you need to get the boat out of the dock (according to Jo its the hardest most dangerous part of sailing), get the sails up and shaped, and when you run out of lake tact! Tacting is when you turn the boat around and that takes all of 2 minutes to do at max. Once you have accomplished all of this (which literally takes about 10 minutes) you do nothing.
I wish I had a notebook with me on this trip because the things Captain Joe were telling us where incredible. This man has life figured out. He figured out how to be happy and make that his career and his life. He used to teach for years until one of his students committed suicide over a long break. It was then that he realized even though he is teaching all these kids, hes not helping them, hes not doing anything for them. So he quit. He walked away. He had no plans and no job lined up. He took a year off and thought about things, did odd jobs here and there, but in the end he said the only thing that could make him be free (which is the only way to be happy in his opinion) was to sail. He has sailed all over the country and to certain parts of the world.
Now here I am sitting on this boat with this man, and a few other students of various ages. We don't know each other, we really werent talking much, and we had no idea what to expect of our little adventure. After we sailed we went out to dinner together at some little local joint and had burgers and beers. We later found a random Mexican restaurant Los Amigos and all bonded over some chips and salsa and margarittas. I was with this random group of people in a random city that I have never been and everything seemed just right. It wasn't until later on that night when we all started receiving texts from our friends "where are you"? "are you going out tonight"? and "let's meet up"! We were all cracking up about this because we simply replied with "I'm on a boat". Not typical for your Thursday night, sleeping on a sailboat with random people, growing to become a small family on Catalina 34. We knew there was going to be two more people joining us for the morning sail and we all said we wish they could have come the night before because now they couldn't be apart of our family.
After this experience it made me want to do more random things, meet more random people, and see more random things. Life is too short and too precious to sweat the small stuff. Having the wind blowing in your hair, laying out in the sun with your shades on, and laughing. This is what life should be about.
This is another reason why I love being a Spartan. We are One.
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